Unimarginable! Pretensile!! Perambulations!!!

What Do You Mean She Lied?

2012-01-28T03:06:00.000-08:00

[A modified version of what would have been a Pop Mechanics! column for Renderwrx. Dedicated to Gene Colan, who died as I was writing this.]

"Since most people who cite a "convoluted mess" in regards to Grant [Morrison]'s work turn out not to be able to pass a high school English comprehension test, said citation tends to be viewed as comedy." - Warren Ellis

Comics people seemed trained to accept only direct, truthful statements, usually reinforced or reiterated at least once more beyond the initial. Better prominent people than me, from Tim Callahan to Grant Morrison, have addressed the gist of this, but I find their coverage often wanting or misdirected, though certainly serving their purpose of their moment.

"Schizophrenics can't process metaphor" has become a joke phrase, a meme to bust out and kill a conversation with a laugh. As with Mark Millar's "My God has a hammer" the phrase has no connection to comics for a number of folks who use it, and even when it does, no connection to its creator. Morrison used the phrase to describe a lack of reading skills beyond the literal, to indict readers who claimed there was nothing beyond the "literal" representations of a dead talking flying tuna with a cigar named Chubby who acts as the animus of a guy vying desperately for a girl with a beard who could, by just standing with him, help him seem like he belonged.

Here is where we have to careful in making clarifications. Failure to see strongly infered metaphors or to notice even in retrospect when a character was wrong, intentionally (lying) or unintentionally (misinformed, confused), is not the same as not enjoying it despite acknowledging those elements, nor is it the same as believing those to be poorly done. It is not a judgment on what anyone enjoys, to point out when a major factor of a work has been missed by a criticizing or lauding audience.

We all miss something, sometimes we are meant to not recognize what is in front of us, in terms of narrative, characterization, or metaphor, until we look back with knowledge we will find on another page. And, none of us enjoy being reminded of a lapse in our critical faculties, in our ignorance, though we are all ignorant of something.
I once saw a guy fall into a rage because he was sure someone was making fun of him when at the end of From Dusk Till Dawn, in the bar in Mexico where our characters have just spent the night, Cheech Marin says he has both kinds of beer, "Mexican and domestic." See, this angry fellow had seen the movie before, and it only now registered to him that domestic beer in Mexico, is Mexican. He didn't see a quick joke, he didn't see a moment in a scene that requires a dialogue beat for pacing, he saw the cast and crew of a major motion picture fucking with him.

Don't be that guy. Especially if you are talking to people who caught it before you. And, don't be the gal who, when she still doesn't get it, insists anyone who does is lying to make themselves seem smart. Humanity as a whole, and most human beings, have never benefitted from these responses, and I can make up imaginary statistics to demonstrate the truth of that. We are all ignorant of something, ignorance need only ever be temporary, and the goal of entertainment is most often not to insult you when it fools you, but to entertain you when you realize you were taken in.

Let us keep back from metaphor and themes for now, and focus on the objectives of characterization, particularly, the subjective element(s) of the individual character. One of the refreshing things about the changeup in the X-books when Joe Quesada was first Editor in Chief at Marvel, was that writers like Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan allowed characters to lie without clueing in the reader, and more, they wrote characters who believed and acted in ignorance.

One of the earliest scenes in New X-Men (Morrison & Quitely) was a dentist who has educated, documentary evidence what he is being told and shown by Cassandra Nova is wrong, but all she has to do is belittle his education and play to his desire to believe things were negative and violent. When they act on that knowledge, she is lying and he is misinformed, and it is left implicit. The reader who is swayed by her misanthropic ploy, who is more comfortable with a negative, violent, selfish truth than a more pleasant one, is left with that truth. The X-Men themselves come to see Nova in the same terms, as negatively as possible (she does commit genocidal acts and generally play the horrible villain, but there is no real evidence she is an evolutionary mechanism for extincting species). Only Charles Xavier, ever the optimist decides she is designed to motivate everyone out of stalemate. And, he too is wrong.

But, because there is never a panel of someone declaring "I was wrong!" or "She lied to me!" you still get people on message boards discussing the ins and outs as if the writer dropped the ball, as though Morrison must have forgot "his" previous position when another fictional character in the story has a different conclusion, almost as if individuals have their own perspectives. Because there is never a simple, declarative "Cassandra is Ernst" we have at least two respected, intelligent writers get it wrong in follow ups?

The most frequent way to cover yourself, in a comic, is to make sure the visual and the text elements say the same thing clear and direct, which Scott McCloud calls "duo-specific." Claremont was often duo-specific, describing a superhuman attack as we see it or captioning in details for a relationship as we see the visual actuation of the same. But, if he wanted something to sail by without everyone catching on, we get "leman" deployed without accompanying verification or support.

And, when you want something to be memorable, duo-specificity can be your friend. Studies show most people do retain information better when taking it in as text and as visual, hence most instructional pamphlets. But, at some point a level of sophistication may be justly expected, perhaps, in that objectivity becomes an unnecessary affectation or the reader can infer an authorial morality behind the structure of a character's voice; perhaps the reader's morality or experience can be trusted enough for an absence of authorial voice (as best can be managed).

It is anticipated by some in entertainment, that this level of sophistication should always be presumed missing or rare. Vladimir Nabokov uses the first chapter of his novel, Ada or Ardor, to dissuade children and lazy readers from sticking it out just for the dirty bits, Steven Spielberg has yet to direct an adaptation that can't refit the men as bad-parent types, and dozens of childrens activity books will still indulge in ethnic dress up games so long as the ethnicities parodied are sociopolitically still safe for it.

But, comics? Comics are for kids. Probably why, when free speech won out in the Seduction of the Innocent case, comics got a self-elected regulating board and a set of rules stricter than those of any other medium in American history - and everyone behaved as if it were law and not just marketing. Crime must be punished at the end of every story, vampires and zombies are a no, violence is grand but no representative of law must ever be injured, passion must never stir the "baser emotions" and respect for parents and law-enforcement officials must be paramount. Regulations for all comics, not only those aimed at children, at virtually the same time was the Hays Code was being revised in acknowledgment of how detrimental heavy regulations were socially (and economically). Because, comics are for kids and even if they are not, the audience will be treated as children and learn to like it!

Not to disagree with Alan Moore, in his observation that Stan Lee introduced the two-dimensional characterization and the first deliberate symbolism into comics, but is that true? A lot of EC stories seem to have characters as developed as those of Marvel in the early Sixties. Wonder Woman has great symbolic relevance conscientiously applied in her early comics. So, is it that Lee reintroduced these elements after the Code and times bled them away? Blondie had gone from comics where things happened and had relevance, almost in reflection of the whole of the American aspect of the medium, to a dull, staid sequence of safe repeating gags by the Fifties (as it has remained, looped, since). Spider-Man reads not entirely unlike Blondie did back when they still made movies about her and her sandwich-enthusiast of a fellow.

Romance comics as well as paranoia comics (same fish with less bug-eyes and sweat?) required at least two-dimensional protagonists long before the Marvel revolution, so perhaps it is only that from Fantastic Four forward, Stan Lee and the Marvel writers to follow applied these innovatively to superhero comics. Moving as those comics could be, they still kept to considerably more adolescent material than the admittedly pretty adolescent EC crime and horror books or the comedy romances like the magnificent Millie the Model or Patsy & Hedy. I would not be the first to suggest it took a low opinion of the readership (accurate though it may have been) for Roy Thomas to take the awesome that is the early Black Panther and strip him of his culture, his political clout, genius, social standing, super-technology, and FF-whupping level of badassery... to make him safe enough to feature regularly in The Avengers. (And, when Panther leaves the Avengers, for Jungle Action, the first thing he does is remind them he's fantastically rich, has mad supertech, and can leave. Go fig.)

It may not have been a too-low call, sadly, depending on what readership is being pursued. Let's assume someone out there does need DC's Mr. Terrific, say, to be "the third smartest man in the world." Did they need to bill the white Mr. Terrific as such? But, this hypothetical audience DC is courting do need it of a black Mr. Terrific. Well, there is another audience that can handle "the smartest man on Earth." Beyond, there is an audience, myself included, who believes that if the selling point begins "smartest" that changing that up synchronous (if not consciously connected) to other changes, such as race, is a bad plan and counter to the ethos superhero comics taught me.

Batgirl can't get past brown belt. Mr. Terrific is the third smartest. But, no matter who is actually faster or equal to the Flash, he is always "the world's fastest man." Sometimes, we the readers and we the critical aspect of comics culture - the academics, analysts, and speculators - sometimes we act in ways that encourage treating us to these gestures placatory to heteronormative and homogenous artifice.

From Anarchy for the Masses: "Robin's autocritique acknowledges that she is undermined by her appearance. She stands for revolution but is instead only seen as a sex object. Note that despite this realization she doesnt stop dressing like a hooker." That was written by two smart, savvy individuals, Patrick Neighly and Kereth Cowe-Spigai. They don't seem to notice what they have done, there, and neither do the people who call Wonder Woman's jacket whorish or say a version of Cyborg looks thuggish, muscle-brained, or gangsta, particularly the one for the upcoming JLA relaunch, where he is, in terms of body and body language no different from any other man on the team except in that he is black.

Taken from a different angle, the same problem of presumptive judging turns into a lack of emotional affect (to be PKD about it). Readers do it enough, and you get writers and artists playing to it, editors prescribing not relational emotions from characters, coming causally from the events and dynamics of their lives, but emotions as a sell. Why else do you think Aquaman is ecstatic while his life, marriage, and political position fall to bits during Erik Larsen's run? There is an editor who knew a readership existed who would see a smile and believe it, regardless of context. An audience does exist who read Robert Crumb's My Troubles With Women and believe the bravado, who are still distressed not by the rape of DC's Nightwing, but because he stopped smiling for awhile after the rape. Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid can write wildly modern work, from dialogue to character tics and plotting, and there will be cries from the Neo Silver Agers of "Seen it! Recycled from 1967!" while Grant Morrison lifts point for point at Agatha Cristie plot or entire passages of an old Batman comic as with Joe Chill in Hell and it's "Too new! Too difficult!"

See also the people who criticize Devin Grayson as inappropriately pushing her personal fantasies into a corporate comic in the same breath as lamenting Jim Balent not drawing Catwoman comics these days. Or, who get put off by how contrived a cast mostly not of white American men is, but not any nearly all-white, all-male, all-American one. Concoct reasons manga isnt comics. Erase Ramona Fredon or Marie Javins from comics history to maintain a "no women" illusion. Who feel Alan Grant was wrong for telling an audience of fans that the Vice President at DC was outright lying to them. This is who is at fault when comics get done, get published in ways that treat any reader as a subnormal child.

As a collective audience, our reading comprehension, our analytical and judging faculties are at fault. Any one of us who opens a new comic and declares any answers not on page one are nonexistent, that deny the metaphors or themes the author and/or six thousand other readers have found, who believe a flashback or a non-narrative illustration are violations of the natural order only fit for mediums other than comics. Readers who don't let comics be grown up or ever mature are at fault whenever a critic, a country, a printer or colorist decide we, the hypothetical audience, the hoped for pre-actuation audience are not to be trusted as sane, aware, self-governing adults, but must be coddled, kept from dangerous stories, kept from dangerous ideas or ideas unpleasant to us even if that unpleasant feeling is rooted in bigotry or idiocy.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is currently raising money to defend Americans who brought illegal comics to Canada. Canada - and to a lesser degree, the United States of America - many nations around the world believe we are not mature enough to handle some kinds of fiction. Censorship of entirely fictional things always means the people the fictions are being kept from are thought to be incapable of handling them maturely. And, it's our fault, because we dont decry censorship enough and because some of us, a very vocal some, read a comic by Kevin Smith and put it down believing Smith wrote Batman wetting himself.

They read a comic wherein Batman tells someone he had an involuntary bladder spasm years before the telling, due to an explosion. In the comic they read, Batman tells - tells - a story. A story someone tells inside a story is discussed as if it were the story, as if it were witnessed firsthand by the reader. That's how lazy it gets.

There is no shame in getting swept up and realizing you were a lazy reader, that your analytical faculties were put on stall for awhile. I have been there believe it. Whether the affable justified-homocidal grandfatherly scientist in Cannon God Exaxxion (Kenichi Sonoda) was meant to be taken straight, accepted positively, marinated in my concerns every new chapter I imbibed, and still today, I just do not know. Planetary, which I have the gall to annotate, was nearly complete before I added one two three and realized that Jakita Wagner has Superman's origin. As a kid, I thought Dan DeCarlo did not know when he was being dirty. There is no shame in realizing your analysis engines were not firing on all cylinders, but there is in not self-correcting at the realization.

Are you a reader who saw no symbolism in Seaguy? You don't have to enjoy the comic, but please, read it again so you can see the symbolism this time and judge it with that fuller picture. A critic calling comics art "dross" while reviewing Kenneth Koch's anthology of "comics mostly without pictures" who admits to not reading comics? Go to the appropriate shelf at a convenient bookstore and start opening different comics, just to take in the breadth and walk away with learned scope and not the inference of memory. An editor, writer, artist, flatter or any other kind of comics-maker, who has seen the ugly, the dumb or disappointing in comics readers or comics press? Do not let that encourage you to make comics you would be insulted to read, that garner you even massive sales if the sales come from an audience you cannot be proud of or relate to.

If You Don't Weaken

2012-01-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

[Note, this would have been the next Pop Mechanics! column to run, if Renderwrx had not gone on extreme hiatus. Due to developments since then, a postscript/addendum will follow.]

The inestimably cool James Baker wrote the other day, that "X-Men: Prelude to Schism has that wonderful 'We Who Are About To Die' feel that almost all stories ruin by going on to have an ending." And we are talking ongoing X-Men, here, not a standalone, not a non-canon or alternate universe tale, but "to be followed by another twenty plus years of narrative on a regular release schedule" X-Men. And, that is sad, that the feeling of "now, everything changes" and apocalyptic shit hitting the fan is inevitably muted by awareness that it will all get patched up and staid soon enough. Who wants to stay in the water if you know you are riding the last wave of the season?

Even in standalone works, the idea that everything settles in the third act can be disappointing, and that the world will return to normal after the end of the story seems, between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and social extrapolation, a cheat. It is a cheat, only it is a comforting cheat, so we often enjoy it despite the nag of its irreality. I was disappointed when I recently learned the massive launch post Brightest Day at DC was intended to come after Final Crisis, while the Milestone stuff was being integrated and relaunched. But, Final Crisis did something better than that wave of new titles, for my money, ending with public acknowledgment of alternate realities. It ends with a news broadcast that will alter consensual reality and tells the audience at home that "This is one story that is only beginning."

Fiction is traditionally unkind to the public. If everyone gets a jetpack or a torrid romance, they are no longer so special, is the reasoning. As You Like It, is often maligned opposite other Shakespeare plays because every character, even passerby, have crazy epic shit going on in their lives. I love Ophelia and Laertes, but they are undoubtedly at service to _the important people_ and nothing in Hamlet trickles down to the commoners.

The implication of public hows and whys is rare by the end of almost any fantastical story; Zardoz to Alien, the fantastic element is most often isolated by the end and as unexplained as can be managed. When something posits vampires as a disease, for example, it doesn't mean anything but the semantic prosody of "disease." Xenomorphs must be isolated in each film (the fourth Alien might have bucked this), by the end, just as Frankenstein's creation must have a castle dropped on him or be frozen in ice by the end of each of those stories. Followthrough, should be avoided as it takes their culture away from ours, which never changes.

You see the flaw? That idea of a suspended, immutable reality may be comforting - You want to live in a pre Civil Rights Movement United States, though? How about pre vaccination France? But suspended in an era/culture under regulations of fantasy logic, dream or hope logic, it can be comforting. And, while fiction is comfort fiction, not everyone can feel the special case apart from the common public.
In a previous Pop Mechanics, I mentioned a Wolverine comic where the hero was prevented from stopping an act of domestic abuse. The X-Men can't go fixing real things like a husband terrorizing his family, that's a "real" thing, different from liberating nations conquered by Magneto or having tantric frenzies with Apocalypse. So, too, Superman cannot gift the public with amazing Kryptonian technologies, not even some simple ones like the coolest Kryptonian poetry or their best musical instrument.

Superman does not walk in the commoners world, and as a recent way-too-wrongheaded story, Grounded, demonstrates, when he does choose to enmesh himself in _us_, Supes does so by pretending away his special talents and knowledge. He walks, instead of flies. Now, I am for reasons medical and social a walker, I don't drive, and right now I live somewhere with atrocious public transit. Most people do not walk, in America - it is unamerican. They drive. They take buses, airplanes, trains and if they aren't driving their own vehicle, they are riding in someone else's. They do not walk across the country only using their talents to harangue poor communities for their plights and physically intimidating journalists for asking them why they are walking across the country. Why don't we walk across the country if it could be enlightening? Not being able to afford it, is probably a big easy answer. Because leaving our friends, families, lovers and local community for extended periods of rumination and self-examination could be considered selfish. Because we do not need to. Pick one, you will be unlikely to be wrong.

A king who dresses as a pauper to walk the streets indulgently for a weekend is still a king. Right? There is a Pulp song about this. It's really mean and William Shatner covered it. But it is not required that Superman be a king who dresses down feel "real life." I believe, when Warren Ellis wrote (in Terra Occulta) a non-Superman Clark Kent saying "I'm a newspaperman, I'll take a vacation when I die," that he means it, he gives a damn and feel a part of the world. Same when Louise Simonson writes the character, either as Kent or Superman.

A criticism of the Daredevil movie - and I think they lifted this from when Annie Nocenti wrote the title - was when the hero is going to bed and can sense people in danger, people dying, and goes to sleep anyway. The hero can't! But, what is he going to do? He is beat up, he is tired, probably hungry and PTSD already. Exhausted. And he is just a guy in red leather punching folks in the street. The same complaint was levied against Alan Moore and Kevin O'Niel's Black Dossier, when Alan and Mina, two brave but not rich, not powerful, and terminally disenfranchised people did not even try to overthrow the post Big Brother culture and government of their Britain.

Also from Terra Occulta, from the first page: "This is a fast world I live in now." And that is from a forced expat, their version of Wonder Woman, who follows it up with, "I want to go home," having, of course, no home to go back to. Like most of us, she has only this world, the job and the local mall and the jogger who runs by every day around ten with the same music faintly detectable on their earbuds as they pass, politicians we may not have elected in office, traffic jams we cannot control, neighbors we cannot choose and cultural judgments that continue whether we care for them or not.

The couple from Black Dossier are the family the X-Men stop Wolverine from helping. Warren Ellis' Clark Kent is the guy J Michael Staczynski's Superman physically intimidates or browbeats with inaccurate history rather than respond to as another competent adult of equal cognizance. Louise Simonson's Superman drinks Soder Cola and Mark Waid's sees animal life as all so close, he won't eat meat but does not begrudge it of others. The Sookie Stackhouses and Robyn Slingers of fantasticka. The woman who finds listening to seven seconds of a Prince song better ten times a day than the MEEP MEEP or RING RING of a traditional phone ring, not Prince, who can afford to live without a phone and does not appreciate musical ringtones.

To carry the Common People comparison, when Grounded ends, Superman will have learned nothing not superficial, any growth will barely be referenced and the world he inhabits will appear absolutely the same was before. When the groups represented by the protagonists of Hellboy or Ghost in the Shell do their job right, or those of X-Files and Fantastic Four (Future Foundation, natch) do their job halfway, the public is spared the fantastic. Or, as Planetary spelled it out, _deprive_ the public. The fun toys are for our betters.

A great move by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee with Fantastic Four was that the public wanted them to keep all this new (and newly-apparent) wonder to themselves. The people who live in the Fantastic Four's neighborhood want the FF to keep themselves locked up and quiet. Alan Moore, together with Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, inverted this about ten years ago, by ghettoizing the amazing literally, moving all the superheroes, robots, monsters and magic to a single city for ensemble police dramedy Top 10. Isolating the fantasy is also the business of the sell from the protagonist of Doktor Sleepless, "Where's My Fucking Jetpack?"
Eventually you get the jetpack, or you see the other guy with his jetpack, and jetpack technology is extrapolated in non-jetpack directions, there are styles and brands, there are related myths and cultures and symbolic relevance that changes because of a prevalance or avoidance of that piece of the fantastic that has entered the world.

And, maybe Lee and Kirby got it right with the inference in Fantastic Four, and inference that grew in early X-Men to become the defining thematic factor of the X-media empire. Maybe, we do - as a public, as a culture - prefer to isolate the different, the elements whose existence, the acknowledgment of which put the lie to consensus reality. They were right about something else, too. Nothing stays ghettoized, censored art gets experienced, silenced people find ways to talk. Attempts at genocide can be horrendously successful, but they fail.
To paraphrase another X-Men comic, getting back to Grant Morrison, "Nothing ever stays buried."

Especially in serial narratives, but in all fiction, there should be denouements but never endings. If you put out there a set of memes, a frame of ideas, and then try to put the fullstop on it, what is that? Were your ideas too weak to keep up? Are you implying you are stalling out or scaling back because the audience needs that, wants that? Conflict generates refinement, so do not dissolve the conflict - Dissolution of the conflict and ghettoizing of the hypergolic elements is what ends a story.

Grant Morrison managed a beautifully romantic denouement to X-Men with Marc Silvestri, called Here Comes Tomorrow and the issues that immediately followed felt entirely like spinning wheels and desperate bids for nostalgia. Nostalgia is not gas, nostalgia is smelling the gasoline that is gone and remembering what the fuel was like. Chuck Austen spending two issues solving a mystery that had already been dealt with and Chris Claremont wrote baseball. Like he was shouting "Baseball!" to distract us, almost. He could have just had the characters yelling "Mother!" and "America!" a lot for all it fumed of nostalgia and desperate security.

Warren Ellis had some experience writing worlds alternate to a baseline fictional world from his time as Excalibur's writer (during which, he spent four issues or so doing the Age of Apocalypse horrorshow of global genocide, slavery, and blues bars), but when he looks at alternate worlds in his Stormwatch story, The Bleed, he has his regular cast see the alternate and be directly motivated by it, while also giving a gorgeous happy nonending, in a man on a cane walking arm in arm with a beautiful girl to lead an army of superhumans up a staircase into the sky to save us all. His alternate Justice League from the aforementioned Terra Occulta or the Batman of its sister story, Night on Earth, keep the idea complexes of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman using different conflicts to prove the vigor of the memes. Age of Apocalypse, though? He wrote some of it, was not in charge of it, and when it ended and "real"/"right" reality was reasserted, pretty much every interesting idea it brought to light faded immediately away.

Chris Claremont kept things moving forward for a long part of his initial X-Men run, though he found some comfortable spots of maintained ignorance, like the pretense of a reasonable or understandable Magneto. When he dipped into an alternate world or possible future, it fueled the main reality, ideas and people and things leaked in, from the dystopian Days of Future Past to the wholly imaginary Kitty's Fairytale. His returns were all competent but good at defanging all the ideas, at stalling progress... except when he wrote outside the canon for The End. X-Men: The End moved things forward faster, put the conflicting elements against each other harder, and tested and adapted and retested ideas more vigorously than any canon X-story Claremont has written in most of my lifetime. It had to get to the "end," the future, and his canon work seemed designed to avoid that, to keep a today with no tomorrow, no "and then what?" because asking for the "and next" means things would have to change.

"And-Next Fiction" is a jargon term to devalorize some fiction but it is, as a technique, honest to life. Life is and-next. Nocenti's Daredevil run was almost entirely and-next and mostly things that the prevailing concept of Daredevil dictated he had no business being involved with, such as wandering PTSD and grieving through Hell come to Earth and the Devil's son messing with his head. Life bleeds over, it seeps through, it keeps being there, though, and if Daredevil is going to live in the Marvel Universe, a world of monsters, gods, aliens and reality-rewriting gold cubes, then all that is as real and present as hunger, pop songs, and pavement.

Warren Ellis' trinity of post-superhuman comics from Avatar (No Hero, Black Summer, and Supergod) approached and-next in different scenarios, but each of them has a denoument, each sets up not only a new today but a different tomorrow. It is not only that the present and future are different in those stories because of the fantastic element generating dramatic changes, but because one day was Tuesday and the next is Wednesday, and Thursday will get there.

I hope when Schism rolls up it does feel of denouements and not endings. The fullstop end, the out of gas and unmoving is a let down. It's cool when comics feel like Wednesday with Thursday coming hard and fast, but never when we see Thursday in the wings and get an anemic last Tuesday instead. And-next or detourne, retell, follow up, respond or parody or satirize or homage, but like the title of an awesome comic by Seth, a fictional autiobiographical bit of astonishing, spells it out, it's a good life, if you don't weaken.

***

When I wrote this, the DC relaunch had completely escaped me, or at least, the breadth of it. Not only did the annoying Superman and Wonder Woman stories (despite some good work by some of the talent involved) come to nothing, it was pointless, then, with a vengeance. And, Prelude ended up being a fun read while actual Schism was something I only finished to be fair in my assessment. Schism was wheelspinning at its most frustrating, as it tried to convince the reader it had excess of gravitas and relevance where it essentially had none.

I recently reread Supergod. It remains very cool, intelligent, moving and relevant. And, has a good line where someone's deity tells them they are, in truth, their stash. And, that's why they love them.

Special Bat-Friend

2011-08-29T02:53:00.000-07:00

“Special Bat-Friend”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The twelfth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

The best Batman, to me, is the one Warren Ellis and John Cassaday leave us with here, the good parent. The best parent. Maybe that has to do with never knowing my father. Perhaps, it is a side effect of an innate conviction I am not good enough to be responsible for children. Could be I want to belong to a crimefighting family and see my mother kick muggers in the face. Let's leave that to the biographers and psychoanalysts, if any ever surface for the job.

It's an awesome take on Batman. The best parent version removes any concern with the contradictions of various versions by making the contradictions actually the definition. Batman is a cop and a vigilante, he is an anarchist company man, he can help you up out of the muck and he can hit you with his car to stop you. And, statistically and by all observances, he is less likely to kill you than just about anyone. He's the goddammed Batman, even failing he is kinda better than you or me but we can be as good as him, if not as efficient and accomplished as he is, if we put the effort in.

The sell of Batman is often that we, especially as kids, could be Batman if we tried. No, we can't. For one thing, reality wouldn't even allow Batman to be Batman. For another, we don't have the money, the R&D department, or the field surgeon gentleman's gentleman. We can be as good as Batman, though, as decent. We should.

***

[From PLANETARY/BATMAN: NIGHT ON EARTH

00 The Planetary field team are in the "shadow of the Bat."

01 Red skies because they are experiencing a Crisis event. Meaning, in the context of the DC Comics shared universe, that different realities are collapsing together.

01.01 This panel and the final of the comic mirror one another, with a "what is that against the moon" motif. May also be a reference to this mirroring technique being employed in famous Batman comic, The Killing Joke.

01.02 Enough grotesques for one building? That is Gotham-y.

02.01 As are the neo-Modernist architectural feats here. This, the WildStorm Universe version of Gotham City is very Anton Furst, designer of the 1989 Batman movie.

03.01 This is the WildStorm version of Richard Grayson and the Joker.

03.02 Their schlubby visual, unshaven, awkward posture, indicates the level of difference between these two and their DC universe versions, due to the absence of a Batman in their lives.

The Joker, here named Jasper (presumably in reference to Marvel Comics' Mad Jim Jaspers), is not only not visibly going around killing people or laughing his head off, he is holding down a real job.

03.03 When Dick opens his mouth, we see how bad it is. Without Batman, the orphaned boy grew into a stuttering, insecure mess, who can't dress himself properly. But, he is still trying to do good, participating in the functioning and for the curious Planetary Organization.

04.02 "It all looks like this" is more or less true. Little of Gotham's streets and layout is ever represented as less than seedy.

05.05 GCPD is Gotham City Police Department. (Pr'y don't need to point that out, do I?)

06.01 Crime Alley in the DC Universe's Gotham is actually Park Row, it's just called Crime Alley because that's very descriptive of it. Notable events on that Crime Alley (and not this one for obvious reasons) include the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents and a young boy, Jason Todd, trying to steal the hubcaps off a parked Batmobile years later.

07.01-04 1986 is the year Crisis on Infinite Earths was published, a comic about a multiversal collapse taking place across the whole DC Comics line and shared world.

08.02 The lamppost is visually similar to the one sometimes represented as being above a young Bruce Wayne and his just murdered parents. All the posts in the area would, hypothetically look the same, but this may be meant to be exactly that one.

08.03 Jasper's behavior here is an indicator that the homicidal and sadistic tendencies of the Joker are not entirely based on a presence of a Batman, only - apparently - his motivation to go do something about them more than touch himself looking at crime scene photographs.

09.02 Evert street in Gotham has porn or prostitutes or both.

Finger Street is a street in the DC Gotham as well, named for Bill Finger, co-creator and writer of Batman and many related characters.

09.03 The Conquerors of the Uncanny are a team from Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld's Judgement Day that takes place in the Awesome shared universe. The comic was a rebooting of various concepts to separate them from the Image shared universe they previously existed as part of, when Liefeld split with Image. This comic is a DC publication under the WildStorm imprint, WildStorm having previously been a part of the Image shared universe and since bought by DC Comics.

10.01 John Black, the WildStorm universe's Bruce Wayne. Bruce, without Batman, is a damaged, lip-biting, incidental murderer and wandering vagrant.

11 This bubble emanating from John Black is a variation on the multiversal snowflake seen elsewhere in Planetary. This pattern will reappear alongside elements from the other crossover oneshots, Terra Occulta and Ruling the World in the final chapter of Planetary during the rescue of Ambrose Chase.

12.01 The cityscape as changed, here, and is photorealist in nature.

12-13 The entire scene has become littered with carefully represented details including exaggerated weathering of walls, pipes, water damage, and litter on pavement. Early indicators that we are in the Alex Ross version of Gotham City.

14 The Batman, in the style and wearing a costume designed by Alex Ross, painter and comics writer.

15.04 Typically, we never see what a batrope is suspended by, but this being a "realistic" world, we do.

17.0305 Every street in Gotham has fetishwear and prostitutes. Jakita is simply seeing Batman in the context of his city as she knows it. And, also, implicating her own leathers.

18.01-03 I know Ross has painted these absurdly big bat-weapons before, but where?

27.01 A Batman in the style of the 1960's television show. The eyes have been darkened and the symbol on his chest relieved of its yellow oval by DC's legal department, as a matter of likeness rights.

The buildings are simpler than either version previously seen, in solid colors.

28.01 Bat-Female-Villain-Repellant is in line with the absurd fix-its that Batman of this television series could produce from his belt, most specifically, Bat-Shark-Repellant.

28.04 This costume shred easily, implying the previous was armored (hence standing up to Jakita's superhuman punch).

29.01 Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman. There are now minimalist backgrounds, mostly of the same muddy dark colors.

31.01 "Mr. Freeze" is a Batman villain, appearing in comics as well as film and television versions of the property.

35.03 A Neal Adams version of Batman.

36.01 And, a Neal Adams style Batmobile.

36.02 Normative handcuffs and not a stylized set of bat-cuffs fit with the semi-realist ambience of Neal Adams usual Batman work.

37.03 The downturned corners of Batman's mouth are very Adams.

38-39 The recurrent panel of Batman seen here resembles a similar arrangement in "There is No Hope in Crime Alley" by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.

40.01 This is the original-era Batman, complete with purple gloves and set in a city that is era-appropriate. And, he's wielding a gun, as earliest Batman is the only canon version to do so readily.

Batman is also framed, here, by the moon, although only his head and no a full-body framing as elsewhere.

41 This is the death of the Waynes in front of their son, Bruce.

42 Batman of the future. This is Cassaday's own design. Batman's head is again haloed by the full moon.

43.02-04 If you have not sussed that John Black is an alternate Bruce Wayne, this ought to make everything click.

44.04-05 "How do you cope?" By doing what he does here, in letting Black go into the custody of the Planetary team. By doing right.

45-46 And, by doing, as he explains here: You give safety and comfort to other people, show them they are not alone.

48.04 Similar to the first page, the shape on the moon that may or may not be a Batman.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

Very Elegant Job

2011-08-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

“Very Elegant Job”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The eleventh in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

Detective vs Spy!

John le Carré once said something like, the difference between a spy and a spymaster, was that a spy who was not a spymaster was a poor spy. Detectives (such as Snow) break down, the distinguish and analyze and simplify down to the elements to deduce a truth. Spies, spymasters in particular, aggregate and accumulate and overcomplicate to obscure or delay a truth. At least, that is their traditional MOs in fiction, and this is Planetary, it's all about fiction. We can see Snow, in this chapter, putting the pieces together like a good detective, but do we see as clearly John Stone being the consummate spymaster and working everyone as his agents, his tools, playing his games?

It burns like hell when you realize you've thanked someone for screwing you over, doesn't it? We have all been there and that kind of betrayal, the smiling shake your hand buy you another drink betrayal, is something we are never really trained to handle. There is no educational short to show in ninth grade Social Studies for that. Why is that?

***

[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man

11.00 The cover evokes Jim Steranko's SHIELD covers and Sixties spy movies, but also has a good deal of story resonance, including the circuits and eye. Particularly evocative of Nick Fury of SHIELD issue #4.

11.01.01 The squiggly and receding type for "1969" evokes a wobblier and more stylish era.

The Bride is shooting a man who looks like Marvel Comics' Nick Fury, one of the characters (and types) whom John Stone represents, as indicated by the cigar, eyepatch, and stubble.

11.01.01-03 That's a helluva flash from the discharging of the Bride's weapon.

The widescreen-mimicking panels evoke a theatrical film.

11.01.02-03 More SHIELD character lookalikes, including a Dumdum Dugan (with the mustache), being held by her Best Men.

The sunglasses and baldness of the Best Men resemble two design elements favored during the late Sixties and Seventies by Jack Kirby (though, there, it's usually blank, oversized eyes, rather than sunglases). Their uniformity visually cues us to their lack of individuality/personality, before it can be explained in dialogue.

11.01.02 S.T.O.R.M. is the precursor of international police force Stormwatch. Planetary is not only the secret history of a century of pop fiction, it is also the secret history of the WildStorm shared universe.

11.02.01 A quintessential illustration of the James Bond as badass. Completely outnumbered, staring at the business end of a gun barrel (several, here), and you know he is going to come out winning.

11.02.02 "Cold World" evokes both the Cold War, which half of this issue takes place during, but also that the world of Planetary is a cold war, mostly, both in the title/comic directly, with the Four vs the Planetary organization, but also that this Earth has, until recently, been fighting and stalemating a silent war between two alien empires that was, in actuality (thank you Alan Moore!), won a long time ago.

11.03 The Bride's agenda is one of stalemate, of stability. She does not want to change the world, but suspend it in a way she enjoys.

11.03.02 Referring to Hark and his daughter, Anna.

11.04.01-02 The Blitzen Suit is in the tradition of superspy gimmicks as favored by the two biggest influences on John Stone, Nicky Fury and James Bond. It uses magnetics to the ends of teleportation, bringing to mind the traditional view of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment. The "blitzen" in its name both indicates electromagnetism and lightning-speed, while also being a call to the lightning-represented speedsters of the DC Universe, most of whom are identified with the name Flash and bear lightning motifs on their costumes.

11.04.02 The Equalizer Disc resembles the lethal ricocheting disc used by an alien in the movie I Come in Peace. Except, I'm not sure it is cutting the Best Men, or if it is firing those red beams at them.

11.04.05 Stone bears the same light scar as the original James Bond of the novels, and Planetary's Jimmy, the Operator.

11.05.01 The red pattern here identified as "the universal border" is more traditionally known as the Bleed and indicates the arterial walls between alternate realities.

Of course the Sixties spy villain has a Polynesian base.

11.05.02 The Bride saying "decouple" is one thing, that both fuel (hot) and coolant (you see where this is going) are involved is another. It isn't a Sixties spy story if everyone isn't being witty.

11.05.04 And having special gimmick weapons, of course, like this saw-toothed bullet. (A regular round would not do the same, oh no.)

11.06.02 If the friction of the round won't do it, surely a flamethrower built into the same gun will?

11.07.05 An example of James Bondian wit. And, of Steranko-style abstract background to highlight the figure.

11.08 There is something classic about the villain midway up the ladder to escape.

11.09.01 More abstract background shapes.

11.09-07 The widescreen-simulating panels give a filmic ambience to Snow's arrival.

11.09.02-03 Furthering the hot/cold dichotomy, the Bride dies here as ice while her Best Men burned.

11.010.01 Is Marrakesh, here, a reference to the film Bang! Bang! You're Dead! or the I Spy episode "Honorable Assassins? Or, simply to a famous portrait of Mick Jagger, whose '67 style the contemporaneous Snow is not a thousand miles away from?

11.10.05 The form of introduction is the same form traditional for the introduction of James Bond.

11.11.01 The straight lines and balance of the "2000" indicate the shift between that year and 1969.

11.11-20 This bar, The Last Shot, has been seen before in an issue of Stormwatch written by Warren Ellis and was part of a superhuman bar culture movement along with fellow WildStorm writer Alan Moore.

11.12.01-03 This concept of souls and Heaven and Hell is, as noted by Warren Ellis, appropriated from William Burroughs, though perhaps only the electromagnetic and nuclear-erasure aspects are original to Burroughs (in terms of publication).

11.12.02 The photos on the wall recall, in their chiaroscuro, the use of photography in Jim Steranko's SHIELD work and other late-Sixties comics, including those by Jack Kirby.

11.13.02-03 The Nautilus here is the one from Verne's fiction, not our "real world" Nautilus of the same year, 1959.

John Stone appears not to know of the woman onboard with Leather and Snow, or at least he does not mention her.

11.13.03 The flashback/memory is embedded behind the contemporary scene, which is a nice visual reinforcement.

11.14.02 Snow unwittingly disrupted a cold war.

11.15.03 "Who benefits from [Snow's] lack of memory?" Well, right here, Stone does.

11.15.05 Which, is why, in part, Stone is honest about his playing mindgames such as this for decades.

11.16.01 Unreal Sanction Force alludes to the mindgaming going on in this very issue as well as throughout Planetary. The acronym also brings to mind the United States Forces, military operations of a primarily non-militant nature in foreign countries (USFJ for Japan, USF-I for Iraq, and so). Further, it may allude to Gerry Anderson's television series, UFO about an organization called S.H.A.D.O., which was an alien-invasion fighting organization run under the cover of being a televisions studio. The aliens of UFO were the organ-abducting type, though never seen clearly without disguising elements, or named, similar to how the Four will be shown to masquerade as extraplanetary aliens to perform terrorist actions, abduct people, and harvest organs.

11.16.04 The Four are playing with Snow because they profit from his general actions and the behavior of his organization, but also, it is the nature of fictional villains to execute protracted sequences of playing with their victims. If they only killed their opponents straightaway, the victim might never turn the tables and win.

11.17 This page utilizes backgrounds of abstract solid shapes in every panel.

11.17.02 John Stone being so concerned that Snow's allies not know of him or his involvement should flag Snow, but does not. This is still superspy business.

11.17.03 Has Stone spiked that cigarette? Snow has thought about the mental blockage before without it collapsing. Eye-opening cig or simply time?

11.18.01 Are those stalactites or teeth?

11.18.02 A Murder Colonel, as seen earlier in Brass' group's trophy room. The mask's bug-eyes and tendril-mouth give a cthuloid or Innsmouth look to him.

11.18.03 Snow is beating on wolfmen with a cane, just as the silver-topped cane in The Wolfman has an implement that can seriously injure a such a creature. Note also, naturally, a full moon above.

11.18.01-03 Note that in the first panel, Snow's pistol is missing from the holster, then in the second, a pistol is dislodged from the Murder Colonel's hand by Snow's punch, then in the third he has a pistol tucked into his belt. Possibly unconnected, but nice.

11.19.02 This is Jakita Wagner's mother in the lost city of Opak-Re.

11.19.04 Sherlock Holmes. And, as we learn, Snow found him at the address most often associated with Holmes, so, really, not the greatest detective work ever but effective.

11.20.03 "It's a game" and the red circles here remind me of Grant Morrison and particularly, The Invisibles, in which, "Try to remember it's only a game" was a recurring phrase and an explanation of fiction and reality.

11.21.05 Stone's eye-rolling and smirk prefigure the reveal of his betrayal here.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

Their Ingenuity and Passion Will Be Missed

2011-08-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

“Their Ingenuity and Passion Will Be Missed”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The tenth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Eulogy for fiction is not their end. In life, you talk about the passed and you kind of know you aren't getting them back, even believing in an afterlife or resurrection you fear you do not get to see them again, to see someone's brilliance or presence. When you do it in fiction for fiction, you make it live again in that fictional realm. Because the idea, as proved by its absence or removal, is the same shape and strength as the idea by its presence, if not better.

"MAGIC AND LOSS" is no more intended to be the final Superman story than "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" It shows why there should be Superman stories. It demonstrates what we get out of Green Lantern stories, mostly without ever noticing that those elements are there, the space police element has been in Green Lantern a long time, the oath even longer, but how often do actual Green Lantern stories demonstrate why that means something as this chapter of Planetary does? Had any story before this one linked the lantern to the policework (which is historically culturally accurate for several locales/communities throughout history)? And, Wonder Woman? This chapter, this portrayal puts the lie to the idea that feminism is about proving women are better than men. She is not going to go to the multi-gendered United States and announce herself superior, she is only going to go and present herself and her culture.

Is this Wonder Woman about erasure, then? Probably, intentionally or not. Presence means something. Always.

The Help is out right now, and it's sort of eulogizing housecleaners and maids struggles during the era often called the Civil Rights Movement (as if there was one movement in a small period of years). Fair enough. It's through the eyes of what in that situation is the overclass, white perspective, though still an underclass (women). Okeh, fair... yeah, fair enough, too. And it's yet another example of the rare role available to black actors even today: the help. Porters and maids. You know what's interesting to me, about this? During the era the film is set in, nonwhite actors were unionizing, particularly black women, resulting in many of those same housecleaner and mammy roles being cast with white actors in blackface to avoid casting the black unionized actors. And, you have a huge movement, watershed being Sidney Poitier, towards refusing to take those roles to make a point of how rare any non-servile role was for a black performer. If you make that movie, though, you have to show nonwhite people doing for themselves, standing up confidently and - not being aggressive, but - being insistently present. And getting erased by blackface for it.

Has that got too much to do with this issue? Reaching too far? I don't know. Is Frances Williams a superhero?
***

[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man

This issue's title is most likely a reference to the Lou Reed song of the same name.

10.01.01 The blanket of the issue's Superman analog.

10.01.02 The lantern of the Green Lantern analog, unlit and empty-looking.

10.01.03 Bracelets of the Wonder Woman analog.

10.02.01 Presumably this is Four Voyagers Plaza, last seen in chapter six.

10.03.03 The winged rig is analogous to the kind traditionally used by DC Comics' Hawk characters, Hawkman/woman/gil. These artifacts, the bracelets, the rig, blanket, are lifeless remains of those concepts.

10.05-9 A replay of the pre-Earth origins of Superman, stripped of familiar iconography

10.06.04 The child is launched from a field named for a(n old) sun god. Superman, powered by the yellow sun, is nothing if not solar-centric and impregnated with a sense of old alien culture and history.

10.08 Superman purified down the The Last Son.

10.10.01 The speaking alien is drawn in a very angular, snaky style, similar to sometime Green Lantern artist Kevin O'Neil's basic style.

10.10.02 Narration and visual boil down the Green Lantern Corps concept to "space's first policeman" with a lamp lighting the way.

10.10.03 A policeman whose badge and tool was "the light of reason" and not, say, a gun.

Is the alien growing those lanterns from its tendrils?

10.11 Here a corps of space cops analogous to the Green Lantern Corps.

10.12.02 The command, the invocation here, is similar to the Green Lantern's oath, which is a rhyming statement of intent usually modified from Lantern to Lantern. Here it is strongly connected to a request/reminder to be "the best kind of policeman."

10.14.03 A Wonder Woman analog and her mother, with a city behind them analogous to Wonder Woman's nation-city of origin, Themyscira.

10.15.04 "And they won't go back" to the Moon, is an indictment of the same magic and loss seen with these superhero concepts and their removal during the course of the story.

10.15.05 The Wonder Woman here is purified not to an ambassadorial role, but also a teacher, a messenger whose message is, essentially (the medium is the message) her existence.

10.16.04 She has "tamed" her bracelets, playing into the use of bondage, freedom, and play-bondage to define pretty much everything, as seen in the earliest Wonder Woman comics.

10.19.04-6 William Leather's powers appear to be analogous, visually, to the Human Torch of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, but they are not temperature related, as seen here where they are a magicky skeleton key. As we will see throughout Planetary, the Planetary field team's superhuman abilities are more in line with the Fantastic Four than the analogs of the Four.

10.20.01 Baby Superman, complete with indestructable blanket bearing a gold standard/shield. Yes, Superman's cape, as an adult, is his baby blanket.

10.20.04 Leather can generate intense heat, however else his powers work.

10.21 A very Jim Steranko page layout. And, here, Doctor Randall Dowling of the Four is posed bending over or in extreme projection to give the semblance of stretching, cuing to mind that he is analogous to Marvel Comics' Mr. Fantastic.

10.21.02 The space cop has been shot in the face, similar to the shot-in-the-head stuffed and mounted Green Lanterns displayed in the Four's outerspace headquarters in the Terra Occulta crossover with the Justice League.

10.21.03 The Wonder Woman analog is explicitly referred to as an "ambassador."

10.21.04 Henry Bendix is the later head of an international superhuman police force, Stormwatch, and a bad man. He will use this artifact to produce a soldier who ends up dead on his first mission in the Stormwatch story "A Finer World" also written by Warren Ellis.

10.22.01 The severe black border given to this panel reinforces how much is left out when all the potential we saw throughout this chapter are reduced to the artifacts.

10.22.01-02 The lightning-like shapes throughout this issue are a nice touch, bringing to mind silently the Flash characters of DC, one of the staples of that company's shared world not given much consideration in Planetary.

10.22.04 All that lost potential that is implied reminds Snow to act not to wait for action. That's nicely done.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

"The World That's Warped"

2011-08-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

“The World That's Warped”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The ninth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

Most of Planetary is taken from other fictions and utilized to a cumulative and purified end, but four things seem to be all over this series more than almost anything, and those are Superman, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fantastic Four, and Grant Morrison. You could shoot a window of those four things and the shrapnel of glass might fall in the shape of this chapter, "Planet Fiction", which is, in fact, dedicated to Morrison. What's funny is that, when you combine those things and leave out thinking too hard about anything, you basically get The Matrix, which also figures heavily into this issue's techniques and ambience.

We do look at ourselves in our fiction. We look at our fiction as if it is us. We hold a bendy mirror up to reality.

***

[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man

09.01 Is the ship crashed into the farmhouse a Superman allusion? There are at least two other definite references to farmhouse rescues of the extraordinary in Planetary later to come.

The red skies may connect with the fictions bleeding together, in reference to the red skies of the DC Comics' Crisis events. Crisis on Infinite Earths will see reference elsewhere in Planetary.

Dedicated to Grant Morrison, writer, artist, and musician and friend and colleague of Warren Ellis. Morrison has done a lot of work (and thinking) dealing with the interaction of fiction and reality.

09.02.05 The bloodspattered baby and teddy bear are not a direct reference to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, but to Warren Ellis' homage to that comic in WildStorm's Stormwatch.

09.03.01 Of course they are "sensors," but that tells us nothing specific, does it? It's the sort of shorthand that works great in fiction to keep us from having to worry about specifics.

09.04.02 All those beautiful-looking bridges to nowhere!

09.05.03 The project leader does enjoy saying (and playing?) God. He is also very Bernard Quatermass, as this experiment is very Quatermass-y.

09.05.04 Rocket, exploration, and four people including a blond woman and a gruff, military-esque second = Marvel's Fantastic Four?

09.05.05 The project brought a group of scientists and artists together to generate a fiction in our world. Shades of Ozymandias' final operation in Watchmen.

09.05.05-06 The imprinting of early experiences on the fiction that is crafted, as well as the stab at immortality through fiction have metatextual oomph as well as practical for the story/world at hand.

09.06.01 Green for "go" is simple enough, but with this chapter being dedicated to Morrison, we must assume his prevalence for stoplight terminology/coding plays.

09.06.02 Also, Morrison's enjoyment of the 23 trope.

09.07.02 More speaking in unnecessary, unlikely infodump with Ambrose Chase introducing himself and the organization by name.

09.08.02 Ambrose's physics-altering powers actually make him a better Invisible Woman than Suskind of The Four. Her invisibles shapes appear to be subject to gravity and velocity, while Ambrose flouts physical laws.

09.09.01 "Too easy" is too stereotypical, especially since we discover it is being staged for them, it is too easy.

09.09.03 If you're going to be movie chic, a handgun in each hand is the way to go. Long coat, too.

09.10.01 More green.

09.11.01 Underground base, alienesque entity, and pushing an electrically-powered door with shoulder-power - I know Warren Ellis was in part influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion with Planetary, but I honestly cannot tell if that comes to play here or this is more Quatermass.

09.11.02 Jakita's "shit" being cut off by the panel border allows the language-restrcitions of the series to remain intact but also plays into a developing series of demonstrations that the borders do limit or can be surpassed, from the bloodspatter (09.10.05) and previous dialogue by off-panel speakers.

09.11.05 More infodump, this time for Drums, and of course, nothing they don't know.

09.12 Fully-powered allusion to the wire-fu, gun porn, and more specifically, The Matrix.

09.13-14 The question of "Why did you create me?" and the answer, here, play into Grant Morrison's belief that when he was visited by higher-dimensional beings who showed him the shape of reality, they also demonstrated that fictions, well-made enough, may be real worlds.

09.14.01 The illuminated (blown out) floor and blood seems so anime, but I can't place a particular example.

09.14.02 Jakita is very absurd kung fu here, a blow with every limb!

09.15.01 An "infodump" is outright asked for.

09.17.04 The hairpiece on the Quatermass stand-in is progressively skewed. Fictions.

09.20.01 More living in fiction. Life as fiction, fiction defining life.

09.21 For all the "green" talk, there are a lot of yellow circles (in a story about a man suspending himself in time).

09.22.01 "I'm the villain" and so self-labeled, he acts the part and excuses it.

09.22.03 Jakita reaching out towards the reader is a technique Morrison has employed more than once.

"The end" is one more piece of self-reference.

09.22.04 The story, at the coda, is reduced to text, inverted from the black on white norm, and formed in short synopsized notes.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

Names, Trademarks, & An Indian's an Indian

2011-08-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

"There have been three characters published by Marvel by the superhero name, Thunderbird. All three are actually pretty good characters, at least in terms of personality, but each has seen a disturbing tendency towards orientalism-style othering, and none of them have the veracity of, for example, a contemporary Spider-Man or Marshall Law. The best version of the original was a Dave Cockrum idea that never saw publication, the best of the second was when his earlier portrayals were being detourned, and the third? I would love to believe Neal Sharra is not called Thunderbird to a) preserve a trademark and b) because he is the other kind of Indian and that passes for wit in superhero comics."

~ from a Pop Mechanics which will happen, but not like this.

The Devil Said to the Deity After He Replaced Him

2011-07-07T17:53:00.000-07:00

"It purports to be set in 2007, but you won't find a lot of futuristic science other than air cars and references to a colony on Venus. Overall, I'd say it's similar in some respects to an X-Files movie or episode--the protagonist works for a secret Government agency, and the familiar X-Files format of weird discoveries warring with bovine disbelief prevails for much of the novel. Too bad Heinlein's prime didn't coincide with the TV series--he would have been a perfect writer for it." - from a '99 review of The Puppet Masters.

So, the reviewer expected better than flying cars, handless cell phones, and a colony on Venus less than ten years from when they sat, and X-Files really could have helped out that Robert Heinlein. Seeing as how he was writing - fifty years earlier - what is easily identifiable as "the famliar X-Files format."

Alright. Could be worse. I once read a paid review of the Lensman series that trashed it as being "nothing we haven't seen in Star Wars knockoffs before." But, sincerely, is our cultural lack of historic and contemporary perspective, a sense of time, continuum, and influence not a great detriment that is too easily, today, corrected?

"The Devil's Empty House"

2011-03-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

“The Devil’s Empty House”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The eighth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

When Planetary started up, the main characters all seemed short-sighted and cavalier, they were cynical except for small bursts of earnest enjoyment at things like surviving monsters on Island Zero. Life was cheap, people were selfish, and missions and mysteries could be entered into and abandoned when finished. The pitch document that many of us saw fairly early on seemed to validate this as the full breadth of the series remit. Many critics, reviewers, and Wikipedia updaters seemed sure that any change in this status quo was a last minute revision or the result of a serialization gone on longer than intended by several years.

I don’t buy it. Wagner was grieving (for the apparently dead, Jack Carter, but also for her amnesiac boss and father figure, Snow) in the chapter previous to this one, and here, as with the sixth chapter, 4, Snow is offended by the cruelty and loss demonstrated by the situations at hand. Snow’s way to be offended is, frequently (post the shiftship visit, after reading documents on the Four) to get productively angry, but he can also be crippled by his inability to save. Beat in mind, we don’t even know his purpose in existing, in walking the Earth, right now, is to save, but here in this chapter, he is unable to rescue Allison; the best he can do his help her die as unburdened as possible.

Death is unfair.

In the end, this will perhaps be the ultimate statement or the primary driving force of the comic. “Right now, I want my friend back,” says Snow in the final chapter, and it validates a whole helluva lot. And, maybe it is true that everything Warren Ellis and everyone else working on Planetary experienced over the years of its serialization had an effect on the comic culminating to that point, but the seeds are here and in every issue. The affected coolness of Snow, of Wagner and Drums, fades pretty quick after the first chapter, and it to no end surprises me how many readers seemed offended when they realized at about chapter twenty-five that this was not only a series of genre investigations where the primary characters remained detached, but about getting immersed in life and doing right. “But,” say some of these readers, “it says right in the pitch document…” And, maybe it does, but it is never demonstrated in Planetary.

***

[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man

08.00 The cover is practically a collage of Fifties and Sixties pop culture monsters, including visual references to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman, the giant ants of Them, a Mars Attacks Martian, and the military counterstrike against them, in the form of tanks, planes, missiles and armed soldiers.

08.01 Similar to previous film-centric chapters, the opening page mimics the widescreen ratio. This is also the first of a number of careful transitionals in this chapter, demonstrating minor changes that alter an otherwise static scene.

The title, "THE DAY THE EARTH TURNED SLOWER” is a reference to the film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise.

08.02.01 Allison is in part a reference to actress and activist Allison Hayes, star of The Attack of the 50 Ft Woman and other films, who died of leukemia, lead poisoning, and other health complications, many of which were enhanced by ill-treatment during her acting days.

08.03.03-04 Another transition between two succinct (unlit; lit) moments.

08.06.03 In 1960, Hayes appeared as Justine (for you Sade fans) in The Hypnotic Eye, about brutalized women and mind control, whose production was connected to Caryl Chessman, convicted of multiple rapes, robberies, and assaults, who claimed to have been set up by a government conspiracy. Further, the screenwriter has said, “Most hypnotists -- if you ever get talking to them -- tell you that the reason they got into hypnosis was to be able to control women. That's the fact of it. So once you know that, and once you've talked to a few hypnotists, you realize that they are basically masturbators who have a way of getting their rocks off without having charm or anything!” (I can’t say that this has any bearing on the date chosen, but it seems synchronous.)

08.07.02 Giant atomic ants are a reference to, along with the cover image, the film, Them, directed by Gordon Douglas.

08.11.05 Does Allison know more about Planetary than she is letting on, or is this “strange world” mention only coincidental?

08.13.02 The Fifties flashbacks are presented in black and white to echo films of the era, particularly, of the genre examined in this chapter.

08.15.04 Back in the second chapter, Jakita Wagner suggests blaming physical mutation and Fifties/Sixties-style monsters on radiation is “retarded,” but here we are, with “atomics” and “atomic projection” being cited as responsible for a whole array of similar effects.

“Atomic projection” could have a lot of long-haired science (or, as Ellis prefers, drunken science) extrapolations, including deformation retracts, which involve continually shrinking spaces, and Category Theory. It may not mean what it implies.

08.16.01 The (here backlit) lamps (perhaps unintentionally) resemble both a blowup of Kirby Dots and also the DMT machine elves to be seen later, in Death Machine Telemetry.

08.16.03 Dowling’s dialogue here, reminds of the era-specific movies’ tendency of scientist-characters delivering very simple information while sounding as if they expect neither other characters nor audience to fully understand.

08.17.04 Note that her half-life here, and that she dies after fifty years may not be related. Her actual whole life, resurrection included, is a reasonable human lifespan, while her body could easily remain radioactive.

08.18.03 Were these experiments, in part, Dowling testing how best to make himself (and his associates) superhuman?

08.18.03-04 Reference to the TV crimesolving version of The Invisible Man, perhaps, and to Ralph Ellis’ novel, Invisible Man, which echoes Planetary in multiple moments, including, “We the machines inside the machine.”

08.18.05-06 Reference to The Indestructable Man.

08.19.01-02 Reference to the P-Funk song Atomic Dog.

08.19.04 “Atomic snowflake field” gives credence to the treatment of “atomic” as meaning spatial and not necessarily related to nuclear research as commonly considered.

08.20.01 Reference to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

Final Crisis FAQ

2011-03-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

Like it says in the title, this is an FAQ for Final Crisis, using the collected edition, with all its revisions and alterations (and inclusion of Superman Beyond) as the primary resource. All answers are subject to revisions, all questions are added as they come in. If you have a better answer than one given, please email it in; if you have a question that does not appear here, please email that.

travishedgecoke@yahoo.com

New Gods
Is there a New God reincarnated in a superhero?
Who is Libra?
What does Darkseid’s fall do/cause?
What does Metron do with the Rubik’s Cube?
How do we know what the Monitors are/do?
What is the Fourth World? What is the Fifth?
When did Darkseid start falling?
How do vibrations/music help defeat Darkseid?
How do New God tools work?
How does the bullet that kills Orion kill Darkseid?

Monitors
Are the Monitors narrativising themselves? Are their canonical history and present changed by their story of it?
What happened to the original monitor?
Who or what was Mandrakk and what was his purpose/goal?
What was Nix Uotan failure?
What is this thing about Uotan "judge" of all evil?
Is the scab to cover the wound of discontinuity, Superman?

Earth
If the Guardians have cordoned off the Earth, how do the heroes hold a funeral for J’onn on Mars?
Why does the German Supergirl say the sky is menstruating? Does she mean bleeding?
How is Flash’s wife at home if she’s with the JLA?
Why is Mary Marvel evil and perverted?
Why the Mad Hatter-tech helmets if everyone is under Darkseid’s influence?
Is Element X the Worlogog? (Calabi–Yau manifold)
Is Barry Allen also Libra?
Are Hawkman and Hawkgirl dead?
Why is The Question with the army of Supermen?
Is Turpin dead in the end?
Why does Turpin not remember meeting Boss Darkseid and seeing the kidnapped children by issue two?
Is Ultraman dead?
Does Batman die?
Why is Sonny Sumo in here instead of living it up in ancient Japan?
Why is Superbia always falling?

Meta
What is the Channel Zapping technique?
Why aren’t characters introduced by name?
Are there sigils in Final Crisis?
Is Final Crisis patterned on the qabalistic Tree of Life and the sephirot?
What similarities in pattern are there between Final Crisis and other DC crossovers?
Is Final Crisis patterned onto Spiral Dynamics?
How do the Five Stages of Grieving play into Final Crisis?
Is Final Crisis patterned onto chakras?

Thanks to Paul McEnery, James Baker, Ben Rawluk, Richard Hunt, Tim Callahan, and from the CBR Forums: Flash Gordon, Alejandro, The4thPip, Dave Hackett, RockinRobin182, Sean Walsh, Choppa, Rorschach 42, Matt001, Theozilla, Buried Alien, jgiannantoni05, Desaad, Retro315, Paul Newell, OzBat!, レベッカ, carabas, Munkiman, BohemiaDrinker, Stu.

***

New Gods

Is there a New God reincarnated in a superhero?

This was an early rumor that Grant Morrison confirmed as being an early thought, that the JLA would be possessed by the New Gods. The idea was dismissed before production, but was it wholly dismissed? Or, is it that the JLA, simply, are not all possessed?

Mister Miracle, Shilo Norman, seems obviously and easily to be ridden by Scott Free, the classic Mr. Miracle and New God of Escape Artistry. Walks, talks, quacks and escapes just like him.

Further, there is a good case that Batman, in Final Crisis and beyond, is a better version of the murdered Orion. He essentially completes Orion’s role in the story and in the prophecied/anticipated final showdown of Orion with his father, Darkseid, God of All Evil. This is reinforced by the allusions to Orion in Return of Bruce Wayne, which follows up directly on Final Crisis and The Missing Chapter which takes place chronologically before Final Crisis. No longer the New God of War, Orion in the Batman context is The Hunter.

Who is Libra?

As seen in the Secret Files and in one old issue of Justice League of America, Libra was once a normal human lab technician who traversed the veil of existence, and came back with power and an evil agenda.

In terms of Final Crisis, though, he is a sock puppet for Darkseid, much as any other of the evil New Gods. He’s called a “glove puppet” and when he is torn apart, his suit is hollow.

What does Darkseid’s fall do/cause?

Paranoia and guilt, mostly. Also, the inclusion of the Milestone shared universe and an alternate Aquaman into the DCU’s main Earth, Earth-0. It causes gravitons to increase, time to come out of sync, and other relativistic effects, as well.

What does Metron do with the Rubik’s Cube?

He causes that simple machine to operate in a way it, by conventional knowledge, cannot. And, in the process, he divides, functionally, by zero. He changed the rules of the game, the rules of how things work in doing this.

What is the Fourth World? What is the Fifth?

The Fourth World, in this context, is the Age, essentially, of the New Gods. The Fifth World, which is ushered in during Final Crisis, is the Age of what comes after the New Gods, just as the New Gods supplanted the earlier Gods.

When did Darkseid start falling?

When he killed all the other New Gods.

When he was killed.

Darkseid is always be falling.

Depending on how metaphysical you want to get.

How do vibrations/music help defeat Darkseid?

Actuality, especially in the DCU, is vibrations and has been defined by vibrations since the first encounter between two universes, in Flash of Two Worlds. Sound is vibration.

How do New God tools work?

Just as the New Gods themselves are ideas given primal form, their tools and devices are idea-things. The New God bullet is Bullet, it is “essence of bullet” as Batman will call it in Return of Bruce Wayne. The Megarod is the ultimate in clubs. The Motherboxxx, the primal personal computer.

How does the bullet that kills Orion kill Darkseid?

If you mean, physically, it was theotoxic, meaning it was poisonous to Gods.

In terms of the causal trajectory of events: A, B, C…

D) Darkseid shoots the bullet into the past, where

A) it hits Orion, killing him, and

B) is dug up and delivered to Batman, who loads it into a gun and

C) shoots Darkseid in the shoulder with it.

Except, this sequence does not kill Darkseid. It could, if he refuses to leave his host, but before it comes to such, the God of Death, the Black Racer, follows the Flashes chasing the bullet Darkseid just fired through time back to its source, at which point, the Black Racer reaches Darkseid instead of the too fast Flashes and takes him.

Monitors

How do we know what the Monitors are/do?

When they first appear in Final Crisis several are named as individuals and tell us their roles because Monitors speak in exposition. On top of that, they are called “Multiversal Monitor[s],” which means they monitor a multiverse. That’s the time they show up and it is more than explicit and expository.

Are the Monitors narrativising themselves? Are their canonical history and present changed by their story of it?

Yes. Rumors and suppositions become truth in the Monitor-land and for the Monitor’s who are infected by narrative, and more importantly, by fiction.

This is how Rox Ogama can be transmuted to a second/perpetual Mandrakk, how the Superman statue comes to have its purpose as a protector/defender, and myriad other developments come to pass.

What happened to the original Monitor?

It's like the Holy Trinity except in armor and one of them is all antimattery. There was the Monitor, pure, entirely of self, and it discovered a flaw (existence/narrative) and sent a probe in, which is the Monitor we know and that Monitor (Dax Novu, the Jesus of Monitors) panics at the idea of contradictions in reality and splits into two Monitor and Antimonitor as the contradiction infects him. Cue CoIE, a response to the contradictions and an attempt to clean it all up. (He cleans it up by scabbing over the contradictions with a new Superman; cue Post-Crisis DCU.)

Story has now infected the Monitors, though, who continue to divide and multiply and have contradictions, so as time passes, they invent a mythology around the Superman-scab and invent a conflict. They invent a Devil, a fallen angel/entity, which is how Dax Novu became Mandrakk, the Dark Monitor, the Vampire Monitor, the Prime Eater of Life, the Judge Who Can Only See Condemnation and Evil. He's the guilt of the Monitors, their panic and self-loathing. He's the Devil. The Jesus-Monitor became the Devil-Monitor.

Who or what was Mandrakk and what was his purpose/goal?

The Devil, the scapegoat horror in the mirror, for the Monitor species. Mandrakk is the paranoia and self-hate of a whole people who perceives only bad and is received only as bad. When reality is near the end, when things are darkest, he swears he will return to Superman and feed on the world. And, he does return, in issue seven of Final Crisis, where we are given a simpler version - not of his origins - but of his identity. We're shown he's vampiric and a Monitor, that he has come at the End of All Stories, that he is a father and Nix Uotan is his son, that he was parasitic and immense beyond our universe.

Most importantly, Mandrakk demonstrates that there are stories crossing over with each other at all times throughout life and history. His personal story is very important to him, it's important to that story, but in Final Crisis, he's just one more threat that pops up, one more cosmic horror, one more fallen godthing made of fear and loathing. He is not even the same Mandrakk as met Superman or was first perverted into the Devil of the Monitors, but he does not appear to know that. The Mandrakk story overtook the individual who became Mandrakk’s story.

In the Crisis of the Monitors, the Monitors have killed their Devil and been blessed with Heaven, except the one who stayed behind for us, Nix Uotan, Judge of All Evil. A judge of All Evil who still judges us as good.

What was Nix Uotan failure?

To monitor and maintain his universe, Earth-51. It was not his fault, however, as he was set up and betrayed.

What is this thing about Uotan "judge" of all evil?

Nix is the best judge, basically, in opposition to the kind of judge his father, Rox Ogama, became. Whereas Rox/Mandrakk could only perceive evil and condemn based on it, Nix, as the Judge of All Evil, looks out on everything as sees the good, the positive and the wonderful in each thing.

Is the scab to cover the wound of discontinuity, Superman?

Yes. But a more pure or superfunctional version of Superman than even our Earth-0 Superman.

Earth

If the Guardians have cordoned off the Earth, how do the heroes hold a funeral for J’onn on Mars?

They do not cordon if off until after the funeral. And, even then, we don’t know how far out the Guardians string the police tape, so to speak.

Why does the German Supergirl say the sky is menstruating? Does she mean bleeding?

Because the red skies of DC's various Crises are manifestations of The Bleed, the membrane between universes, hemorrhaging or overtly bleeding. This may be, at least metaphorically, an obstretrical hemorrhage, but it may just be cyclical and in other ways a menstrual metaphor.

Jody Garland points out, "Superman Beyond refers to the Bleed as the Ultra Menstruam, meaning Beyond Monthly."

How is Flash’s wife at home if she’s with the JLA?

There are three Flashes in Final Crisis and they all have wives. It is Barry Allen’s wife who is under the spell of the Anti Life Equation, not either of the other Flashes’ respective wives.

Why is Mary Marvel evil and perverted?

She is possessed by Desaad, New God of Sadism and, as Black Adam puts it, “a leering old man.” She is not, herself, turned “evil.”

Why the Mad Hatter-tech helmets if everyone is under Darkseid’s influence?

The helmets are basically there to give marching orders. Really clear psychic headphones.

Is Element X the Worlogog?

Yes. The Worlogog, often visualized as a Calabi–Yau manifold, and Element X, visualized in Final Crisis as a Calabi–Yau manifold, is the building block of actuality as well as a manifesting-element and tool for manipulating actuality. It is a supersymmetrical aspect of actuality by either name.

Is Barry Allen also Libra?

No.

Are Hawkman and Hawkgirl dead?

No, although in Final Crisis, they are meant to be. It was a decision after Final Crisis was published that left their off-panel deaths not actually deaths.

Why is The Question with the army of Supermen?

She was on Earth-51 when they came by and hitched a ride with them, since she felt she owed it to friends still on Earth-0.

Is Turpin dead in the end?

My vote says No, but it could go either way. The heroes go out of their way to avoid killing him repeatedly and his last words in the series are Turpin’s own and not Darkseid’s, who has been excised (or exorcised).

Why does Turpin not remember meeting Boss Darkseid and seeing the kidnapped children by issue two?

He is suffering a memory block from the trauma of having Darkseid enter him. This is also why he is sexually excited by his brutal (and unnecessary) beating of the Mad Hatter.

Is Ultraman dead?

He was a vampire Superman. Both vampires and Superman have pretty good chances of return, if you even consider either alive in the first place.

Does Batman die?

Yes. The Omega Sanction causes Batman to live a succession of lives, which we see as Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, and when he survives, he is thrown into the past where he meets ancient indigenous Americans who will become the nation known as the Miagani, in what will one day be Gotham City.

Alternately: No. Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader's alternate lives are, like Batman's flashforward to his false funeral after his heart attack, his visions during the ritual at Nan Parbat, and at various other moments of near death expressed during Morrison's Batstuff, hallucination only. That people from the various lives of Batman attend the same funeral may be evidence of this.

Why is Sonny Sumo in here instead of living it up in ancient Japan?

Our Sonny Sumo did just that. The Sonny here is from Earth-51, though he doesn’t confirm this until Mother Box tells Mr. Miracle.

Why is Superbia always falling?

It’s a joke, Son. Superbia is Latin for “pride.” Pride, you may have heard, goeth before the fall.

Meta

What is the Channel Zapping technique?

Though addressed in relation to Final Crisis as if it were a new technique, this is something Morrison has been employing since he got into comics. Channel Zapping is the paring down of a narrative to the most interesting parts, as if one were skipping back and forth between channels on TV to only watch the cool stuff.

It is conflated, in the final part of Final Crisis, with an “orchestrated chaos” that feels less informative than it is, and involves on sequence being given to us in segments running causally backwards panel to panel.

Why aren’t characters introduced by name?

A popular complaint to this day, is that Final Crisis omitted introductions and just presented characters without saying who they were. It is not actually true, for the most part. We are, at minimum, given names as soon as someone appears in the comic.

Man and Metron are named in the first two panels. Vandal Savage is not named until later in the first issue, and, while Dan Turpin is not named for several pages after his introduction, he has a running voice over giving us lots of other information and his role is explicit. The decedent deity is named as soon as the body is identified. The Question and Green Lantern, John Stewart, are named as soon as they are introduced.

The only time mass amounts of characters go unnamed is during group shots where their role is not as individuals but as a group; the villain protest march, piles of bodies, the draft gathering, et cetera.

Are there sigils in Final Crisis?

There are a number of glyphs and sigils present in the comic, including those worn on the chests of various characters, such as the Superman S-shield, Batman’s bat, and Orion’s sun. They also come on t-shirts, painted on faces, emblazoned in tattoos, and spraypainted onto buildings.

Is Final Crisis patterned on the qabalistic Tree of Life and the sephirot?

One could make a good case for this and for the intentional application of Crowley’s English Gematria.

Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman may represent different lines of progress in the sephirot, with Superman representing the Pillar of Mercy, Batman, the Pillar of Severity (which would echo the Khamael synchronicity below), and Wonder Woman, the Pillar of Mildness.

In Crowley’s Gematria, the following values become evident:

Superman = Sun of Life, Treasure, Solar Self, Quantum...
Batman = Mars, Khamael, task, yajna, forge, guard, Ruach...
The Question = androgynous, ipsissimus, strange drugs, Zarathustra...
Nix Uotan = our chosen, great work, wonderful, limitless......
Wonder Woman = Mister Miracle...

What similarities in pattern are there between Final Crisis and other DC crossovers?

(I’ll come back to this.)

Is Final Crisis patterned onto Spiral Dynamics?

Not as tightly as Seven Soldiers, New X-Men, or The Filth, certainly.

How do the Five Stages of Grieving play into Final Crisis?

Not too well, that I’ve noticed. But, then, I don’t see them applying one for one in life too much, either.

Is Final Crisis patterned onto chakras?

I believe it is possible, but cannot map them one for one, myself, in a satisfactory manner.

Properly Dark

2011-01-14T23:05:00.000-08:00

“Properly Dark”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The seventh in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

”To Be In England, In The Summertime” has a lot of embedded information and a whole mess of giving a damn more than is obvious. This is also true of the British Invasion of American comics, a thing too easily forgotten amidst the accusations that the bitterness and detournement were all poses to look cool. And, yes, there is some looking cool in those comics and in this one, but when you actually sit down and read early issues of Jamie Delano’s Hellblaze or Alan Moore’s Eighties works, you can only deny that the author – and their characters, their fictional world – cares a great deal. There is real moral revulsion in Hellblazer and Sandman, the death of the title character’s family at the hands of his writer, in Animal Man. Not all of the autopsying of live superheroes, deconstructing patriotic paradigms, and examining the ruins of brutalized human beings was for laughs; you are meant to cry for people in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, to be nauseous reading the desolation or ripeness of various John Constatine tales, and to be cold when reading Neil Gaiman’s take on him, in Hold Me.

It seems significant that this issue came out amidst the so-called Neo Silver Age, a thing that no one could define to everyone else’s satisfaction and which more than half of the supposed contributors at the fore refuted. What was meant, mostly, to be a return to brighter, gungho values of the Thirties through Sixties was also meant to be a call to stop looking at the horrible bits of those same decades, to willfully ignore the everyday tragedies and cruelties of human politics, households, and confusions. For the most part, the British Invasion did not lack the wonder and brightness, though. It only had it’s fair dose of the wicked stuff right up front and not whitewashed away, not ignored.

If giant space squids over the city fail to be as impressive in the face of a fourth term Nixon, rape, murder, and betrayal, that is because of the power of these other, by superhero standards mundane things, not because the squid is lacking. When the big heroic superfellah dies a the beginning of Zenith fighting a Nazi in tights, it is not that the hero is useless or unimpressive, he’s a big guy, he’s tough and forward and… dead. Because – and you may not have heard this – the Nazis were pretty good at killing people. This was just a good way to remind of that (and it helps that it sets up the extradimensional dark overlordy beasties for the rest of the story). On the rise demons in an early issue of Hellblazer have big teeth and drippy tongues and all, but they are horrible because they are heartless fucking yuppies.

If this were a different sort of comic, if this were a Neo Silver Age comic (perhaps), the Superhero would have been justified in running after Jack Carter to beat him to a pulp, if not dead, for the same reasons DC has a team called The Elite to job it for Superman, for the same reason every two superheroes who meet, practically, have to hit each other for awhile before they can be friends. Why DC, again – and DC published the WildStorm titles like Planetary, remember, and Vertigo – had Black Canary, not too long ago, hit her husband to prove she was morally right. And he took it. And hardly a reader batted an eyelash. To prove she’s right, the moral beacon of the story struck her husband during a conversation. Punched him right in the face. Because that’s what superheroes do, it’s the default and it is the default because we ignore the consequences of such actions and move on to the next spectacle.

***

[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man

07.00 An homage to Dave McKean covers that exemplify the early Vertigo line from DC Comics. Similar elements include the use of textured wood, photographs, atmospheric text overlays, even space down the left side for the Vertigo imprint’s banner to go.

07.01.01 Jack Carter is analogous to DC’s John Constantine, marked by the initials, the use of magick, the seedy conman presentation, and the innate dogooding despite it. The name “Jack Carter” is the same as the criminal protagonist of three Ted Lewis novels, including Get Carter, which has been adapted to film, twice. This is, undoubtedly, intentional, and similarities will become apparent.

07.02.01 The title comes, possibly, from the Art of Noise song Close (to the Edit).
07.03.02 In the dark, lighting his cigarette, is a common introduction to John Constantine in his stories.

07.03.04 The moon/sun dichotomy between Carter and the Superhero begins here, as well as the motif of introducing Carter with his head haloed by the moon.

07.04.05 These superhero teams were seen, briefly, in Stormwatch, also written by Warren Ellis.

07.05.02 The Superhero is framed by a dim sun, here, continuing the sun/moon motif between him and Carter.

07.05.04 Reference to Dream and his sister Death feeding pigeons in Sandman #8, The Sound of Her Wings, written by Vertigo superstar Neil Gaiman.

07.06.02 Visual references for the characters at the funeral include Etrigan, the Demon (created by Jack Kirby and written in the early Nineties by Garth Ennis), the Demons Three (who appeared in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing), the Metal Men (who were dysfunctional and tragic long before their early Nineties mini, which actually made things less messed up), The Specter, Swamp Thing and Abigail Arcane/Holland, Dorothy Spinner from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol (according to Ben Rawluk, who knows better than I), Animal Man and The Writer (from Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), Black Orchid, and in silhouette, Shade, the Changing Man (written for Vertigo by Peter Milligan, created by Steve Ditko). Richard Hunt also identifies in the crowd, Brendan McCarthy's Mirkin the Magician and Nick Abadzis' Hugo Tate.

07.07.01 Shifting Man = Shade, the Changing Man. Forest Deity/Robin Hood = Swamp Thing, nailing down the connection through the unmentioned concept of the Green Man.

07.07.05 The jacket with the circles is reminiscent of similar clothes worn by the Milligan version of Shade.

07.09.02 Carter, again introduced with the moon behind him.

07.10.03 Peter Milligan would write a series for Vertigo called Greek Street, years after this was published. The reference here is to the actual street, however, as presaged by the mention of the Coach and Horses. Films and other fictions have mentioned the presence of prostitutes there. Greek St is where the Ancient Grand Lodge of England was organized, and where the London sewage system was developed.

07.16.03 Reference to Michael Moorcock, who has dealt fictionally and nonfictionally, both with London and with the Eighties culture thereof (and much, much else).

07.17.04 The Superhero is a reference to many superheroes – and indeed the concept of the superhero, as it was – perverted for new, cynical uses during the birth of the “Vertigo Era,” aka Alan Moore’s Bad Mood and Its Influences, most specifically Moore’s own Miracle Man work and Grant Morrison’s Zenith.

07.19.02 Moon-halo motif for the final time. And there’s the shotgun to reinforce the Get Carter connection.

07.21.03-04 Visual reference with the shaved head and tattoos is to Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan that Warren Ellis created (with Darick Robertson), published by Vertigo. Ellis had famously quit Hellblazer, whose title character Jack Carter is mostly a riff on, due to a shelved issue and different standards of content and portrayal. Ellis has said the following about this visual transformation: “John and I had talked about "his version" of John Constantine, who would have a shaven head and weird tattoos and/or brands. When scripting that scene, I said, John, here you can do "your" Constantine/Jack Carter, but, you know, with the bald head and the tats, you could just make him Spider for laughs... Which was, you know, a joke. I was a little mortified when the finished comic came back with Jack AS Spider...!”

07.22.05 Is that an upside down question mark in the smoke?

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

The Word is Bastards

2011-01-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

“The Word is Bastards”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The sixth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

There’s something in Warren Ellis’ old City of Silence about real people not having origins, but only births, lives, and deaths. That is, in some very serious ways, what is wrong with the perspective of the Four. They want to have - they pursue - origins, because their births and lives feel unsatisfactory. It is not as if you don’t see people in actual life do the same thing. People who feel denied a birthright or cheated out of glories others achieve or have handed to them, and they go running at things they think will do that for them. Often, like the Four, they do not want anyone – much less, everyone – along for the ride, because that would make them less special. It is said, in the comics, that the Four have condemned the Earth, and really, this refusal to let everyone on the Great Adventure, it is damnation, isn’t it? It’s what generates the concept of eternal damnation, of permanent – deserved – residence in Hell.

Now, I wasn’t raised with Hell, I don’t like the idea of eternal punishment or denial, and we don’t have it culturally. But, I went to Catholic school (Saint Catherine’s Indian School, which used to be in Santa Fe and now is nowhere). I understand the idea, if only academically. I understand its parameters, and it’s still shit. Hell, the perpetual punishment and denial (of pleasure, aid, God, et cetera), is something people choose to believe in because they want to feel special. There is a reason why, when nonbelievers represent Hell, or even casual believers, it’s often Hitler taking a pineapple up the rear or the seventeen worst people in history, not a whole mess of normal decent folks who simply failed one or more of the myriad qualifiers, depending on what you believe the rules are. Not everyone avoids the issue, and we have Pierrot stories and Richard Matheson novels to acknowledge the unjustness of this system of damned and saved, but on the whole, it is unpleasant to think about unless you feel like getting on the highest horse available and looking down on everyone.

Now, there may not be such a thing as a free lunch, but we can certainly work towards the cheapest lunch for everyone possible, can’t we? We can reduce costs and expand production until everyone has the opportunity to have what we want, like vaccines and dinner, good movies and warm blankets. The selfishness that makes some people stop at their gaining some of these aids and privileges in life, is the same selfishness that allows someone to accept their personal transfer into Heaven while other people get damned to Hell forever for things that would not raise an eyebrow while they sat next to you on the subway. It’s entitlement. If you would be upset if something were denied to you, but don’t feel a wrongness in anyone else being denied the same, well, what would you call that? You getting upset because you don’t have running water suddenly, or you were never allowed to have a thought that was not ascribed to your genetics, your sex life, your hairstyle or place of birth, but not being as outraged when it happens to others? What is that if not damning?

***

[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories

06.00 The Four framed by a fifth spacesuit helmet. Ultimately, this means nothing in-story, but it was fuel for theories of a fifth passenger on the rocket, and alternately/also that Snow was implanted in continuity as the fictonaut.

Note the insignia are the American flag and the Iron Cross, implying the US and Nazi Germany connections of the astronauts.

06.01 One of the Four’s eye, reflecting the Moon and the crack into the Bleed they entered through it.

06.03.02 The pyramid is often associated with so-called Illuminati or Masonic organizations thought by some to rule the United States or the entire modern world.

06.03.03 Four Voyagers Plaza is a play on Four Freedoms Plaza from Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four.

06.04.01-02 Note that Artemis’ rocket is more explicitly phallic.

1961 is the year that the first issue of Fantastic Four was published. The original story has the title characters attempting to reach the Moon via rocket, while later versions change this to intergalactic space or another dimension.

06.06.03 There is a face in the reflection on the right-hand side of the visor.

06.06.04 Dowling is analogous to the leader of the Fantastic Four Mr. Fantastic, except that he’s an ex-Nazi and evil.

06.07.03 Subterrans, as seen here in a display case, are analogous to the Molemen seen in the first issue of Fantastic Four and since.

06.08.01 Greene is an evil proxy for the Thing, the pilot of the Fantastic Four’s flight that gave them superpowers.

06.08.02 Leather is an evil version of Fantastic Four member, the Human Torch, as well as legal grandson of the Lone Range analog, the Dark Ranger, and the Green Hornet/Spider/Shadow analog first seen as part of Brass’ group in chapter one.

06.08.03 Suskind is an evil analog for the Invisible Woman, wife of Mr. Fantastic.

06.08.05 The Nautilus referred to here, is likely the vessel captained by Nemo in Jules Verne’s 20, 000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. The US submarine of the same name went active at the end of the year mentioned here, 1959, and as we later discover, characters invented in the Nineteenth Century are not given analogs in Planetary, but appear as themselves.

06.09 The stairs imply that this is an aperture to a different space, not a framed image.

06.11.01-06 This snowflake-like (and Snowflake-like) image is an aperture into the Bleed, as see on page one in reflection.

06.14.02 The Four, similar to the Fantastic Four, seem to have achieved superhuman powers via botched spaceflight.

06.15.01 The folder bears a stylized 4 that has been modified to a swastika.

06.16.01 Like the Human Torch, Leather has a distinctive flame-like aura, though his is bright blue.

06.16.03 Leather burns away his facial hair similar to how the Human Torch shaved an amnesiac Submariner in an early issue of Fantastic Four. Snow is, at this point, amnesiac, but unaware of the extent.

06.17.01 Broken Earth-A refers to the trap set by the Four involving a retrieval mission to a fictional Earth.

06.19.02 Leather apparently can generate enough heat to get natural temperature-lowering Snow to sweat.

If it has not become obvious by this point, Snow is also analogous to the Human Torch in that his powerset involves temperature manipulation. The Drummer and Jakita Wagner, as well as the as of yet unseen former third field team member, Ambrose Chase, also stand in, in terms of superhuman abilities, for members of the Fantastic Four. (Chase alters the local laws physics as the Invisible Woman must with her invisibility, force fields, and ability of the fields to act independent of gravity. Wagner is incredibly strong. And, Drums is superhumanly good with machines and data-processing.)

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

Occupied Wilderness

2010-11-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

Dear History Channel (and other documentarians and infotainers),

When dealing with the colonization of the Western Hemisphere, it might be sound to reconsider referring to everything as "wilderness," particularly where there are large bodies of people living. If there is a town there, regardless of whether it is filled with White people, it probably is not wilderness. If there is a city... most definitely, not wilderness.

74 Excellent Horror Movies (w/Sells and Trailers!)

2010-11-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Stephen Graham Jones doing it, 74 horror films with short sells attached to them, in case I can persuade you. I deliberately left out anything shorter than feature length and what I perceived to be primarily adventure/thrillers (Lost Boys; Vampires), inevitable tragedies (Daughters of Darkness; Rocky Horror Picture Show), disaster and weather movies (Towering Inferno; Dawn of the Dead; The Mist), heroes against darkness (Split Second; Bloody Mallory), angry movies (The Devil’s Rejects), movies that are wittier than they are scary (Evil Dead 2; Razor Blade Smile), those made safe by persistent humor or eventual total happy closure (Watcher in the Woods; Bucket of Blood), monster flicks (Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 2; Tremors) and grand guignol (Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl; Repo: the Genetic Opera), no matter how much I loved them.

Alien - Filled with emptiness, pregnant with malignancy, it amazes me still how Walter Hill mutilated and rebuilt a relatively innocuous space exploration chiller into a psychosexual gothic masterpiece. Some of Scott's best direction, too; much less involved than some later films.

Angel Heart - Hopelessness and damnation in about ninety minutes worth of celluloid.

Apt Pupil - Acted with a sharp conviction that mirrors the razor's edge quality of the edititng, and a range of sound from Ottman extending through the near-subliminal to the overwhelming. One of the best Stephen King adaptations from that fine collection, which has yielded so many excellent films.

Audition - My sympathies fall on her end. When they revisit their date and you see everything he's not listening to her divulge? That scares me more than extra fingers at a crime scene (but makes me jump less than that bag).

Bio Zombie - The Hong Kong Bill and Ted in Dawn of the Dead, and all the better for it. Funny as hell, the movie can be heartbreaking when situations are clearly beyond the skills, and perhaps even the understanding of characters who demonstrate a genuine, unaware earnestness, occasionally called "heart" in pictures of more serious pretension.

Bubba Ho-Tep - Everything about the mummy is hilarious and goofy. Everything about dying slowly, old, alone, forgotten somewhere no one knows - or cares - who you are, is not.

Butterfly Kiss - A road movie where they go nowhere. A romance where without love. Familiar in its discomfort, reassuring in its strangeness, and inescapable for all.

Candyman - Bernard Rose should have his own special Bernard Rose Prize. Tony Todd, should, too, but for other reasons.

Cape Fear - Condensed intimidation. Robert Mitchum takes up the frame, occupies whole rooms, and he's breathing down the neck of every scene he isn't actually in.

Carnival of Souls - When a carnival of damned celebrants is the comfortable part of the movie, that's just magick.

The Cat People - Show don't tell sucks. Now, know don't show... that's something. Terrifying by intimation, the best part The Cat People is that it doesn't matter if most of the suspected stuff is happening or not, it doesn't matter how much you simplify, de-violence, or pare down, because even the simplest truth from this, the smallest actuality, is revolting and cruel and so sad.

The Changeling - The solidity of this film, the unwavering nature both of the characters and events, but also the telling, the motions, sounds, and cuts of the movie itself gives you now time to compose yourself.

Cigarette Burns - Taps that fear of helplessness, of others suffering the consequences of your weakness, and has a good punished for curiosity vibe, that always gets me.

The Company of Wolves - Like a zen knife parable some kid made up: no matter where you stab, you stick yourself. Brilliantly shot, cut, acted, written, and committed.

Curse of the Cat People - One of my all-time favorite films in any genre, any mode. The brutalization of innocence, the torment of enthusiasm, and the corruption of possibility. The nicest person in the film, the best representation of hope and optimism, has been dead and ignored for a long time.

The Dark Half - A vicious, vivacious and twitchy flick. A great example of the externalization of fears without absolution.

Day of the Dead - The desolation and loneliness. You never really do know other people, but that doesn't stop some folks you think you know from scaring you. And, that damned wall scene at the beginning. Every. Single. Time.

Dog Soldiers - Takes bad situations and makes them worse before just dropping the floor out from under them to the situation fall on some hidden spikes. Not literally, but that's what it feels like. And, still, there's quips and jokes and mourning.

Doom Generation - Builds itself up through satire, cartoonish butchery, and throes of casual eroticism and neurosis, until all the humor gets bled out while the thing is held down, bellowing in death, fighting the inevitable.

Eko Eko Azarak - Gorgeously shot, masterfully edited, there is genuine emotional resonance behind the primary emoting of the cast and more twists, revelations, and subtleties than films of this nature are often afforded.

Eko Eko Azarak 3: Misa, the Dark Angel - Shot to look cheap and old before that was a thing, the movie exudes the atmosphere of the best of Bava, Argento, Fukasaku or Franco. The avoidance of showing or discussing makes horrors implicit and stronger for it, while the broad strokes of physical horror, the magic and violence, are astonishingly operatic, operating on a poetic rather than narrative wave of rightness.

Event Horizon - Mean, bloody, and sadistic. A direct response to a spate of movies meant to be horrific by using the signs to tell us it was horror and who cares if it was felt. Inevitable and inexplicable, just like all the best sadism to fear.

Evil Dead - Even the guy marked out as The Jerk, isn't, really; he's just a dope. Ash, who will get jerkier with each succeeding movie, is quite earnest and meek, here, and the other characters are a good range of decent enough folks who are simply ill-equipped to deal with evil, possibly dead, spirits coming out of the woods and cellar to torment and convert them with blood, pain, and Three Stooges humor.

The Fly - The best avoidance of closure ever. Even as an amoral, nonnegotiable monster, Brundle Fly is still less horrendous than much of the world extant. The difference is that ability to negotiate. You can negotiate with idiots, bigots, bad bosses and jealous exes, but you can't negotiate with an insect, and you can't negotiate with your own body, your own mind.

From Dusk Till Dawn - What if The Getaway had vampires half the way through. A half-dozen hypocrites of varying degrees, criminal and otherwise, trapped in a bar full of bloodsuckers and vigorously out-acting each other.

Gemini - Poetic, operatic, and cruel. Gemini offers no optimism that is not immediately taken away, like taking the hands off a baby.

Ginger Snaps - Mean, petty, and shortsighted. Puberty as a werewolf metaphor and social violence externalized as physical mutilation; even if it's the other way round, does that change much?

Ginger Snaps 2 - Empowerment is often just a feeling, something realized when it stops working. An exploration of varying degrees of socially-acceptable and unacceptable dehumanization with gore between.

Girls School Screamers - So silly and predictable it shouldn't be creepy. Like campfire tales you hear all the time, but still make you jump or watch the woods keener after every telling.

Gothic - Excitedly inaccurate, a mystery play for the damned, covering those wonderful artificial binaries of God and Devil, whore and virgin, man and woman, day and night so intensely it makes skin crawl and eyes twitch, so absurdly it shows their artificial boundaries like a windowpane revealed by moonlight glinting on the slick trails where slugs have passed.

Grindhouse - A big, loud, visceral bastard of a double feature with built-in extras, and a loving homage and sensible continuation of whole swathes of cinematic history. Props to Rodriguez for making someone slipping in the rain and hurting their wrist more painful to watch than Tarantino's extended slow-motion mutilation of a car-full of women.

Halloween - Scarier because Laurie Strode is not a terrified screamy distressed victim, and she still can't kill the fucker. That's what makes The Shape the bogeyman and Freddie Kreuger and them all comedy acts, in the end: fighting back doesn't really help except to delay.

The Haunting - The movie does stuff to your head. There are things happening in it that are not actually there.

Hellraiser - Pinhead's a great, desolate monster. And, he's the least horrifying thing in the movie.

Horror Hotel - Every hotel you stay in? Every strange new town you go to? People are doing horrible things the moment you shut your door.

House on Haunted Hill - Gleeful and careless, even when people start dying. The party never ends and Vincent Price never disappoints.

The Hunger - Desire plus helplessness plus loneliness plus ?

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte - People ain't no good.

Ichi, the Killer - It's been called the ultimate Batman vs Joker movie, and the meanest romantic comedy ever. Designed to take filmic violence and entertaining trauma to their ultimate extensions, any intimation of kindness ends up revealing a delineation between choice and a state of being, shows that "kindness" is not a set position, but relative, always relative.

In the Mouth of Madness - Best Lovecraft homage ever. If, They Live is a fairytale of the things that really run the show, then In the Mouth of Madness is the life lesson that strips away heroism and pretension from that fairytale. As a friend of mine said to Sam Neill's character, when we were watching this one night, "You're fucked, Son."

The Innocents - Freddie Francis, here the cinematographer, is a genius, and here, he is in the company of many brilliant people working their individual arts to a greater whole.

Land of the Dead - When the dead walk the Earth, people will still be bastards. Class horror, body horror, identity politics and the military industrial complex wrapped up in a bow they made by gutting your sister and tying her intestine tight around the thing.

Lord of Illusions - By the end, the movie entirely subverts itself, the early horrors beyond horror made pathetic, the inane turned magnificently wrong and insidious, and poor, traumatized fear junkie D'Amour wading through the cesspool storm of it, face turned up to see through the shit and lightning. (This also wins my personal award for Most Improved By Having a Director's Cut.)

Lost Highway - First time I saw this was at a private screening, middle of the night, sleep deprived and wired. The shrill pitch of the film, alone, did me in, but when a phone rang, everyone in the theater jumped up and tried to answer it, we were so enmeshed.

Lust for Dracula - Meant to be a softcore porno and nothing more, I'm sure it is if it's playing latenight Cinemax and you're treating it as background static. Having seen it in a theater full of people, I think we were all traumatized by twenty-foot-tall schoolgirls dazedly working invisible Thighmasters between their legs and chanting, forced medication via bottles with obviously handwritten labels, the care and feeding of imaginary babies, and Darian Caine hanging around naked at empty swimming pools at night, being wistul, chatty, and lonely.

Lust for a Vampire - Scripted by the awesome Tudor Gates and featuring Pippa Steel, the male star, Ralph Bates called it "the worst vampire film ever", which is a ringing endorsement when you realize what he primarily objected to was irreverence and a discarding of subtlety in an area/sub-genre that had been long guilty of too much subtlety and not enough self-awareness.

May - Every line spoken to May either plays like a pick up line or a rejection. Every interaction, a seduction or abandoning. Every person a failure to measure up to their best parts. That she chooses to take the best and ignore the rest, in the end, is almost sensible beyond its explicit cruelty and violation.

Midnight Meat Train - Unflinching and full of rough hungry lifestuff. Voyeurism and honor perverted in equal bloody measures. And, Ted Raimi dying bad in another Clive Barker adaptation!

Necronomicon - Atmospheric anthology film earmarked by enthusiasm and real effort, and a great transfiguration of some HP Lovecraft stories and the sense of reported madness and dreadful interconnectivity of his fiction.

Night of the Hunter - The Story of Right Hand Left Hand has been told many times in film, but it begins here and amazingly, only here is it made implicit that a just or an evil hand look pretty much the same, operate the same, and can be capable of the same things without ever knowing they are more than a hand, or what sort of hand they might be. Plus, like in Cape Fear, Robert Mitchum will fuck you up, just 'cause.

Night of the Living Dead - There's a sense of pervading emptiness that isolates every scene, every emotion and character, and it's shot and cut like newsreel footage more than a fictional film. Like Carpenter, Romero seems to believe fervently that a movie lives and dies by its cuts, and that the participants should be restricted to their strengths, not their potential range.

Nightbreed - It is said that the final offer on getting this cut from X to R was to take off a few seconds of David Cronenberg smiling. A happy David Cronenberg, all by himself on camera, is more than a hard R.

New Nightmare - Turns the audience's enjoyment of and enthusiasm for Nightmare on Elm Street movies into complicity with murder, cruelty, and wrongness of every shade. Extended the reach of those knifey fingers so far the only thing to do was start over completely or have Freddy come down to each viewer's house and have him put a hand on their shoulder as they rewatch one of the old ones.

Nightmare Castle - Murder is always more awesome when someone who looks just like the dead person shows up after. And, the only thing scarier than darkness is brightness and clarity.

Perfect Blue - Mean, fast, and inescapable. Take a sad song and make it... unbearable.

Phantasm - An excellent balance of plot-based creepiness and just-for-the-hell-of-it horror, with an unsettling depth of ramifications and jangle along for the ride.

The Prophecy - Christopher Walken improves everything. So do remorseless horrible statements made by innocent-faced children and a piss and vinegar Satan. Adding Eric Stoltz and Elias Koteas into the mix is just chocolate sprinkles and a whiskey heart to a sundae of the apocalypse.

Psycho - A tense and deeply physical film, you feel like a voyeur and inappropriately judgmental whether watching two lovers in a hotel room, a woman stealing from the office, or murder in the shower.

Psycho 2 - All the naive stabs at mastering fate from the first movie? Practice for things really going wrong.

Re-Animator - The mad scientist is the sanest person in the movie. And, really, once you do something, why should it stop there? Vive la ciencia or bust!

Return of the Living Dead 3 - Zombie malaise in the rivethead concert called life.

Shaun of the Dead - It's easy, and comforting, to be funny and scary by turns, but this movie manages both simultaneously, while also having something to say.

Suspiria - A beautiful film, in terms of image and motion, a cruel movie without exception to character, and an awesome production of intimation. Can't you use schoolgirls for your school? Build the doors and halls bigger so adults are child-sized and the world dominates them regardless.

Tales from the Dark Side - Snappy, slick, and gooey! Every segment offers a different pacing and a different kind of horror, wrapped around a casually-portrayed scene of Debbie Harry getting ready to cook her paperboy.

Tenebrae - The best "ten minutes into the future" movie. The public and the press are as horrifying as the killer, the second people start trying to defend the murders as some sort of social correction or moral adjustment.

The Thing - Isolated from anything but cold, ice, and death, one of a small group of researchers may not be who he seems. As they terminally pare down the suspects, does it matter, eventually, who?

Twilight of the Dark Master - It's bad enough when someone sprains an ankle or gets a cold and no one cares. When rape, murder, dismemberment, and possession are things everyone around you ignores as they go on about their daily lives, it can get to be a bit much.

Vampyros Lesbos - Sometimes you think - you insist! - I want to be alone. Sometimes you are alone, at which times, that want isn't quite so prominently featured. This movie demonstrates that with scorpions, kites, and people dressing each other in a restaurant.

The Vampire Lovers - Sex dreams often feature giant screeching cats, don't they?

Videodrome - Everyone, at some point, feels used in their lives. But, there are levels of use.

White Zombie - Old school zombies are just slaves that were buried for awhile. Bela Lugosi's character cares for his zombies as they work his sugar plantation, about as much as most slave-owning plantation-running rich egomaniacs care about their slaves.

The Wicker Man - Christopher Lee in a dress and Cher wig dancing with scythes, happy as a clam on make love to a clam and buy it a drink day. The Equalizer trying very hard not to be excited by sexy young things hitting on him or anyone trying to buy him a drink. And, there may be a dead or missing young girl in there, too.

Planetary Annotations

2010-10-05T21:28:00.000-07:00

Below are links to any of my annotations for Planetary, the Wildstorm comic by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, Scott Dunbier, et al.

01 "All Over the World"
02 "Island"
03 "Dead Gunfighters"
04 "Strange Harbours"
05 "The Good Doctor"
06 "4"
07 "To Be In England, In The Summertime"
08 "The Day the Earth Turned Slower"
09 "Planet Fiction"
10 "MAGIC AND LOSS"
11 "Cold World"
Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth

Blessed Arrogance

2010-10-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

“Blessed Arrogance”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The fifth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

Binaries stick out more than multiple choice, probably some part of our deep psychology that is essentialist at heart, or maybe it's just operational laziness. But, if we can see things in either/or terms, in yes/no ways, we most often will. We can know it's wrong, that it's oversimplifying or misdirection, but still, we will.

Rereading Planetary and knowing the metatextual significance of all of Brass' team in that mountain base, knowing the in-story significance of many of those characters, such as Leather and Blackstock, I still find myself paring down the group to being about Hark and Brass collaborating, East and West, even though I fully recognize that East and West, Occident and Orient, are mythic constructs, mindsets and not actual people. Brass and Hark aren't actual people, they are mythic constructs. And, as they appear to be in opposition to each other, so, narratively and emotionally, they are opposites.

I assume Warren Ellis, at least, is aware of this tendency to binaries, to opposing forces, especially in areas where it really doesn't matter, does not add anything but to reify the difference. Look at Snow's lack of smell, here, in this chapter. I can't think of any good reason, biological or metatextual, for it, but... we learn eventually that his opposition, Dr. Dowling, has a strong smell. That smell might be him seeding into other people's brains, getting into their heads, but Snow? Snow doesn't have a scent, it seems, because his opposite number has an overpowering one.

Similarly, Brass has a scored visage and very stiff, immobile hair, while Snow, here pared as his opposition/foil, has smooth skin and quite unruly hair. This chapter is didactic in the best way, it's just a conversation between two men, their dissimilarities and where they are roughly the same all hit up against each other, as they talk things out, getting us, the reader, to where we need to be. The text with spot illustration sections seem to stand out as Brass' natural world, while the more traditional comics-looking sections, the modern world, that is the realm of Elijah Snow. Everything else in this issue, including the differences between Brass and Hark, between Snow and Sparks, are given to us through their conversations, through their positions in the world and in history.

None of the binaries are real, but the reification of them may be useful for motivation. In times of stress, Doctor Axel Brass still hums the same song as his father, the same nationalistic, nostalgic tune.

***

[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories

05.00 An homage to the 70s paperback reissues of Doc Savage stories, the years faded into the black background are years that Doc Brass, shown here, would have missed out on, spending the time in a cave, pointing guns at a door no one was coming through.

05.01.02 The scratched look of Brass’ skin, and the stiffness of his hair, lend to the metal motif of this stand-in for the Man of Bronze, himself a precursor to everyone’s favorite Man of Steel.

05.02.01 The spot illustrations are done in black and yellowing wash. How better to illustrate an old pulp hero than a semblance of old pulp paper?

05.03.01 The Century Babies, including Brass and Snow, here, are extraordinary men and women who were born at the beginning of the concept of the century. There appears, at this point, to be nothing uniting them except a shared sense of justice, superhuman abilities, and a general slowness to the aging process, though more will be revealed, and the Century Baby is actually shown to be one of the core types of superhuman (hint: it’s the Jesus model).

05.03.03 Jenny Sparks, at this time, was the leader of a new superhuman Super Power, calling itself The Authority, and a Century Baby. She controlled and lived as electricity, in many ways, and was the Spirit of the Twentieth Century. She has since died.

05.04.01 Snow is a very formal fellow in some interesting ways, including insisting on “Doctor” Brass and not the affectionate “Doc” used elsewhere, and referring to the “videotape player” here and “television”, not a VCR and TV.

05.04.02 Snow shows some of the blessed arrogance, with this issue, that Brass mentions later. Here, he’s asking a man who has been isolating inside a mountain for decades, about a recent computer company. But, he also remains silent when called on about his complicity in not informing Brass how long he had actually been trapped in there.

05.05.01 Warren Ellis has mentioned elsewhere, the appeal of Doc Savage’s chemistry set and the fun and games he had with those vials and beakers.

05.05.02 “I was born for it. Trained for it,” reflects what will become a common trope with Century Babies, that they were not only introduced to this life, special, but that they learned to be more special.

The idea of writing “the plan for the Superman,” also feeds into the later revelation that the Century Babies are manifested, made things, put into this world with an agenda behind them. So above, so below. Here, Brass sees himself as the result of a eugenics experiment, up to his birth and then a training regime, a special education, to make him, himself, after that birth.

The incestuous nature of Brass’ parents, may actually make some sense, if one thinks about standard breeding practices and a dwindling lineage. It’s also very much in line with Philip J Farmer’s revision of the Doc Savage mythology, in his Wold Newton works.

05.06.01 H.G. Wells was a science fiction author, social theorist, and general figure of interest, during the late Ninteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. He pioneered the modernistic use of science fiction as social fiction, with, indeed, the social aspect being the one area of science where he frequently got things right enough to still be valid today.

05.06.02 Was the girlfriend Jenny Sparks? Snow says he only met her once, but we learn later, that this was part of his engineered amnesia. And she does get namechecked immediately in the next panel.

05.06.04 John Cumberland, as related on the following page, was a Superman analog from another reality, very much the New Deal ideal, who died in the late 90s flying into a UN orbital platform and going splat, after being used by all sorts of people from all sides of the political jungle gym. Cumberland, like Kent, is located in England.

Just as Snow is claiming to have done in this issue, Cumberland sat out whole decades, maintaining general inaction and noninvolvement with the world.

05.07.01 The shield on Cumberland’s chest is very similar to symbols used to identify extropians or extropy movements. Cumberland died trying to make the world grow up, be fair, and be nice, which are fairly extropian notions.

05.07.03 What is that fabulous architecture behind Brass and Cumberland? Thereby hangs a tale, I’m sure.

05.09.01 The fetal spider-men… Spider-babies? A reference to the film or just happy coincidence?

And, that word, “miscegenated,” really does carry a menace to it here, in the past, which it shouldn’t today. As we’ve seen already, Brass, for all his goodness and good intentions, is not an unbigoted man.

05.10.01 As seen by his ability to fix things by shooting the hell out of them. Which, is also more of the abovementioned “blessed arrogance.”

“Black,” here, although most likely not referring to race, falls in line with “miscegenated” and other words that hold semantic prosody inextricably linking them to race. Quite common in the era of pulp fiction being alluded to with these ink wash passages.

Observe, also, Brass’ narrative extolling the genius of Europe, even as the examples given are Brass’ villainous parents, but America has Emperors and Murder Colonels, Britain has Black Royalty of UnderEngland. The nationalism of Brass’ day and his own psyche is deeply entrenched, and so emic to his perspective he cannot see its machinery working his thoughts and perceptions.

05.11.05 “And that’s a part of the world…” is more of Brass’ blind perception of everything in nationalistic and racial terms.

05.12.06 Of course, the enlightened, exceptionally bred White man with his big guns will tell the Asian guy who is, not only his same age and just as educated, but ostensibly his intellectual superior, that “we’re all on the same planet.” The White Man’s Burden must be very heavy on Brass’ back some days.

05.14.01 “[S]tep into the light” that completes a “secret society.” Of course, Brass’ would be in the light, because, well, light is good. It’s those folks described as black or Black, that you have to worry about.

Despite all of Brass’ maturity and understanding, he still mimics the organization that gave him life, with his club of heroes, here.

Maximilien Robespierre was one of the primary figures of the French Revolution, who developed the notion of a Supreme Being who was a “radical Democrat” from which he anticipated divine messages, and was eventually executed.

05.15.01 Demonite, here, is a reference to the alien species that is commonly known as Daemonites, in the Wildstorm universe that Planetary, for the most part, takes place in. Again, the reference to “cleaning out an enclave” contains semantic prosody and social implications beyond its literal point.

05.16.01 The Charnel Ship is a shiftship, a craft for traveling between universes, via The Bleed, which is what the “blood-colored tides beyond space and time” refers to.

That, Brass and his allies lose here, despite the Special Operator’s success just before on the U.S. West Coast, is a demonstration that this world, unlike the traditional Doc Savage world or most superhero/action hero worlds, allows for failures. For tragedy.

05.17.01 Note that only Brass and Edison are looking at what appears to be a snowflake manifestation out of The Bleed. The rest are looking at the bodies, the poor damned dead. Edison, in fact, seems rather placid about the whole thing, looking directly up at the manifestation.

05.18.02 The damage to Moscow, London, and Los Angeles, is reference to events seen in the first story of The Authority, called “The Circle” and was done by the mindless followers (and de facto children) or a raging Yellow Peril stereotype, called Kaizen Gamorra.

05.18.03-04 “[T]hey were stopped,” hints at the possibility that the best change Brass and his allies made to the world, when they left it, was that tragedy could be corrected eventually, damage could be stopped if not prevented. This world may be self-correcting (which, again, plays into the nature of the Century Babies as we will learn of it later).

05.19.01 The calming, nostalgic effects of The Marseilleise feed right back into Brass innate nationalism and inability to perceive the connections he has to the culture, practices, and even the family that spawned him.

Even Hark’s mode of travel is “black” and “sinister” and sneaky.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

New SD Article & AWP Reading

2010-10-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

Sequential Daze has a new article on comics theory, practice, and potential up for free. Some of the comics people covered, include: Alan Moore, Kathy Acker, Bill Keane, Charles Schultz, Donald Rooum, Bryan Hitch, Warren Ellis, Kevin O'Neill, Kenichi Sonoda, Ira Marcks, Jack Kirby, Keiko Nishi, William Blake, Garth Ennis, and Alison Bechdel. The essay covers several ways comics' critics and audience have attempted to limit the genre, their reasons, and how voicing them with authority can cause a general audience to believe the limitations necessary or right. Then, the limitations get stabbed, kicked, and dissected to make sure they're unnecessary, which, mostly, they are (and detrimental, too).

At the last Associated Writing Programs' conference, in Denver, Colorado, I was a replacement reader on a panel of University of Nebraska at Kearney's Sandhill Crane Retreat fellows. AWP has decided to make it one of the two panels they are releasing podcasts of, for AWP members. I read about four new poems and talk a bit about not embarrassing the birds, but I'm possibly the least interesting contributor to the panel, which includes such luminary writers as Wang Ping, Sherwin Bitsui, Christina Eisenberg, and my own wonderful mother, Allison Hedge Coke. You should give it a listen for them, and enjoy my bit while you're at it.

I Liked the Movie Better

2010-09-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

Lots of movies began as other things, whether they're being retold, interpreted, or followed up on. And sometimes those movies suck, but once in a great while, the movie - We kind of have to stop using "film" for these, don't we? There really won't be film recorded on, but for niche pretension or effects, soon enough. Anyway... - the movie is the superior artifact.

Some movies I like better than their source material:

Adolescence Apocalypse - Either a sequel or retelling of the television show, Revolutionary Girl Utena, but pretty much the same folks, this boils down thirty-nine half hour episodes to a ninety minute morality play as it is played on a skipping record player with the speakers turned away from you and a mouse or a monkey dancing on the vinyl as it turns. Witty avoidance, sharp metaphoric demonstrations of teenage life and everything that can come after it, there are parts that just break my heart and others that remind me why I have one.

Angel Heart - Fucking brutal. It's excellently acted, insanely well paced, beautifully scripted, and exceptionally directed, too, but the brutality, the amazing cruelty and the underlying kindness and depth of empathy push it beyond.

Fire Walk With Me - The sequel, prequel, and follow up to television's Twin Peaks. I saw this before I ever watched more than ten minutes of the show, mainly because I didn't have broadcast television in the house when it aired, and really, I like the show, but the movie means more to me. It might work better without the show's elaborations and lightening. (Lightening, despite the show having a downer/tragic ending and the film, well..!) Brutal, uncomfortable stuff, and the last film from David Lynch I feel the word "unflinching" can be put to until Inland Empire came about.

The Godfather - Hey, I like the novel, but the film owns the characters, the stories, the pervasive tonal storm of deepseated convictions of business, respect, pecking orders, crime, debt, and family.

MASH - The books go one way (boy, do they!) and the TV show veers stronger and steadier in another, and you know, there is some good stuff in both, but what a movie! The inability to isolate conversations, moments, or in any way navigate except by fording the whole bubbling babbling thing is quite remarkable, and the hand of Altman shines over it all.

Psycho - I could prepare a whole slew of reasons, from the musical stings to the cinematography, the sexy palpable atmosphere of the hotel scene, the real concern in Janet Leigh's face, the killer pacing, but... Tony Perkins trumps everything. This, children, is the lesson of life: Tony Perkins trumps everything. This is probably why there are sequels. ^_^

Rambo - I like that he lives. I like the hyperbolic strain the movie works into the narrative of the novel. That simple.

Re-Animator - Take all the desolation out of an HP Lovecraft adaptation and come out with something brilliant? That, alone, takes remarkable talent. Atop that, there's some crack acting, surges of genuine revulsion, comedy, surprise, and anticipation, and everything feels perfectly natural as it progresses, then it's over like a shot from the shadows parting your hair.

The Trial - Remember the Tony Perkins rule? Right, then. Add Orson Welles. Bearing in mind that Welles and Perkins are overdubbing almost the entire cast, take this bastard beast, brew in deeply constrictive sets, marinate through a perverse focus on Tony Perkins trapped in terror, in his trial, in tight trousers, even, and kick the whole thing until it can't stop crying when it thinks of shoes. Then raise the thing in Imelda Marcos' closet.

Special mention to many of the films made from Clive Barker's Books of Blood collection(s), and both adaptations of "The Thing", for different reasons.

Top Shelf, But Not On The Shelf

2010-09-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons to keep things out of print and off the shelves, some of which still have validity in an increasingly digital-happy world. Maybe, the work was immature or crafted during a bad moment, outside influences may have overridden the quality impulses with dreck, who knows. But, a lot of the time, it comes dpwn to whether significant money can be made, and well, fair enough.

Without speculation into why these aren't available commercially to me, you, and the English-speaking population as a whole, here are some things I wish were readily available, new, in a format I can enjoy, through markets where I know the people responsible (artists, writers, directors, et al) would be receiving a cut:

The Enigma by Peter Milligan, Duncan Fegredo, and Sherlyn van Valkenburgh. This needs to be in print. Not only is it perhaps the finest thing any of the creators have been involved with, it may be the greatest comics ever done. The story of families, how the mess us up, and the presumptuous instincts that make us sort the world as if it fundamentally exists to sustain and entertain, to test and torment us. Full of tactile and brilliant sensuality, witty and elegant segues, an exceptional range of techniques, emotions, and identity politics, it's just a beautiful work.

Kachou No Koi is a Flash animated series about a company president so deeply in the closet, he can't see that the collection of gay skinmags he keeps at the office, or the lifesized mechanical big brother he uses for a chair, alarm clock, and bathtoy, might be outing him to everyone else. Fastpaced, hilarious, cocky and peppered with moments encouraging empathetic embarrassment, there is no commercially available English-subbed edition, just fansubs online and HK bootlegs that appear to've been translated by drunk pandas.

Will Shetterly's Cats Have No Lord has been out of print way too long, and could use a more indicative cover, anyway. A bold, carefree fantasy work, it has a good time with itself and only looks back, in the sense that Shetterly knows the genre's history and contemporary scene well enough to use the novel as counterbalance to other works and some general tropes.

Rutger Hauer vs The Devi... I mean, Split Second, directed by Tony Maylam (and company?), shouldn't be as good as it is. But, oh yes, it is. Drastically revised from a deadend standard cop chases killer piece set in contemporary Los Angeles by a few hands, Hauer and costar Kim Cattrall among them, into a madcap cop on the edge versus the Devil as a PredAlien cannibal fingerpainting clawbeast in the future, it forgoes plot logic and clues for psychic impulses and oneliners and really big guns. Hauer's character is said to survive on coffee, chocolate, and anxiety, but when this lifestyle looks like the sane option if you want to thrive in this flooded, oily future, then we're getting somewhere special!

Status Updates

2010-09-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Future Earth Volume Four is very near release, but being an issue for tributes is a two-handed engine of Janus proportions, and we need the face smiling out at both readers and contributors. The previous three issues, including the extra-long third volume are still available free from the site and various other torrent and direct-download sources.

The Summer Edition of Florida Review features brand new Travis Hedge Coke type fiction. "Alien in Nature" is a They walk among us! tale, featuring a retiree who realizes his wife is not his wife, everyone is in danger, but what can you do when everyone else is oblivious without seeming nuts or just very petty?

The September issue of Sequential Daze opens with an article they solicited from me, called "How to Make it Work", where I tell you Frank Miller was right, everyone makes mistakes, and other controversial assertions. Mostly, it's concerned with the resuscitation of racist characters in corporate-owned comics, though, and what responsibility the artists, writers, editors and such might have in perpetuating those trademarks.

Oberon's Children may still be coming out from Pazzaria Productions, someday. It will still be a multimedia YA story featuring prose, illustrations, music and other exciting illuminating elements. It will probably cost something after a few tasters set out to entice you. The toymaker will still be designing weapons for a greedy king, the kids will still break every rule they can, an their god is still a micromanaging bogeyman. If you ever wondered what Robin Hood would be like if Robin was played by Grace Jones as a college dropout, this will give you some idea.

And, when I told you Hello, I told you all I know. If it isn't specified here, I'm the wrong person to ask. When I know more, I'll pass it on.

Thanks for the support, everyone.

Action!

2010-08-16T22:02:00.001-07:00

"Grant Morrison is no William Burroughs. And a comic in the style of Burroughs would prove to be about as interesting an unintelligible as an action movie made by Carlos Castenada."

I read this over at the CBR forums earlier today (it was posted a few years ago), and it stopped me cold in a moment of hilarity and something like an abscess within the thoughtstream. I know it's saying that comics written by Burroughs, or in that style (Which one of his styles? Who knows, who cares?) would be uninteresting, but the implication, with the followup on action, is that Burroughs couldn't do excitement/action, isn't it? Or that his writing has any similarities to that of Carlos Castenada.

I haven't read a lot of Castenada, but what I have read was nowhere near as visceral, poignant, horrifying or funny, as any random moment of William Burroughs' backlog of literary achievements and gutbuster routines.

But, let's put aside my supposition that it implies a lack of action-oriented work in the Burroughs oeuvre (If not action, what does Naked Lunch start out with? Soft Machine?), and let us have a look at the idea that William Burroughs work is "unintelligible."

Those of you in the audience who have read (or heard) a standalone routine from Burroughs, or have read a complete work: Were you at a loss to explain, not what happened, but what it meant? When Burroughs explains the algebra of need or "the worst thing I ever stood still for" are you scratching you head? On the subject of heads, did the giggling, smoothtalking ghost whispering in your brain and through tape recorders until you believe him to be your voice and do as he says, is that something you cannot reiterate, yourself, in a telling?

I don't think I lot of Burroughs work is concerned with linearity or chronology, no. But, with communication? Intelligible communication? Communication of emotion, of consequence, of drive and sublimation? Yes, I'd say so.

So, has Burroughs been made a bogeyman for the same people who still can't take the existence of Tristram Shandy? Is he a literary archon, now, a facade erected by the desperately ignorant to keep Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin safe?

Platte Valley Review - On Sale

2010-08-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that copies of the 2009-10 Platte Valley Review, if they cannot be located at a fine local bookseller with a physical shop (and why not? What's wrong with them!), are available via pvr@unk.edu for ten bucks, American, and other denominations Earth money of equal value, once it has been converted to American Dollars. Featuring work by acclaimed and brilliant luminaries such as Jack Myers, Anne Waldman, Lolita Hernandez, Quincy Troupe, Ted Kooser, Diane Glancy, and Sam Hamill, and released by the University of Nebraska at Kearney, this is more than worth the money and sure to become a cherished item passed down generation to generation until such time as cults are formed around it while the chimps are busy chiseling the faces on Mount Rushmore into more palatable pan troglodytes visages.

I am proud of my small contributions to the edition (cover design, some layout and proofing), which turned out nice, but even prouder to simply be included in some way in a collection featuring such excellent writers and wonderful people.

2010-08-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

Murderer!

2010-08-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that the out provided in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell , for the survival of Mary Kelly - that it's either her or not someone mistaken for her - makes the reader complicit in the murder, by virtue of desire (to see her killed or escaped) and our own innate feeling of rightness. No matter which way you go, you're making a call on a callous and horrible murder, unless you float the story in a nebulous Schrodinger's victim arrangement.

That's quite good.

Future Earth Magazine Volume Four

2010-08-08T02:06:00.000-07:00

Tara Betts, Lyn Lifshin, Norm Breyfogle, Marilyn Nelson, Clive Nolan, and more. Coming soon. Very, very soon.

Super Thought

2010-08-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

To those who insist you can't maintain telling stories about a character as powerful as Supes is in Morrison/Quitely/Grant's All-Star Superman: How do you explain all the stories told where Superman is that powerful or all the stories with all the proxies, analogs, or allusive characters? How about all the stories that keep going with other godlike or immensely powerful characters?

You can't tell thousands of stories of a Superman that powerful just punching things, no. But, if you change the nature of what he's dealing with, if it is primarily things that cannot be punched into correction, well, then there's a lot of ground that can be covered, a number of stories that can be told, isn't there?

Hunger, despair, poverty, jealousy, frustration, doubt... these cannot be punched effectively, and these are some of the things that Superman attempts to tackle in what I think of as his best stories. All-Star, Birthright, the stories told by Alan Moore and those from Elliot S! Maggin, these are about caring, not about how an alien can never be part of "us" or America (he was raised in Kansas by farmers, of course he's American!), a distant God or whatever. Superman can beat everyone up never appealed to me as much as Superman gives a damn.

As a pretty much lifelong non-driver and perpetual pedestrian, I can't see the point in Superman hobbling himself, pretending a new authenticity by walking around when he can fly. That's like me pretending to be blind because I think it'll make me more humane. It wouldn't; it would make me a pretentious jerk. Even if the lack of capacity were legitimate, a lack of power doesn't make people decent, any more than immense power and all the access in the world does. Decency makes us decent, being kind makes us kind. Being worthwhile makes us worthwhile, and nothing more.

New X-Men 115 - Close Reading and Thoughts

2010-07-28T01:11:00.000-07:00

The following continues a close-reading of Grant Morrison's New X-Men. Issue 115 was written by Morrison and illustrated by Frank Quitely, with inks by Tim Townsend. It was published and is owned by Marvel Comics.

115.01.01 The Master Mold Sentinel whose head is seen here is processing skeletons, as well as the inorganic materials they traditionally use to make killer robots.

115.04.02 Another example of something more efficient being constructed out of something larger and potentially unnecessary now.

115.05.02 The subject of the finances of the X-lifestyle rears its head, once more.

115.06.02 Codenames, mutant names, superhero names, are forms of self-identifying as seen in practice here. Business calls for business names.

115.09.02 Wolverine will recover from taking those hits, but it’s still rather decent of him to play human shield.

115.09.04 This run is the first time blood in X-Men appears as fully-saturated bright reds, so a little goes a much better way to representing bleeding violence than seventeen gallons more of black splashes. That Ugly John lacks a noticeably useful mutation is nice.

115.10.05 The only other time I can remember seeing Cyclops lose his visor and the visual effect including Kirby Dots, was X-Men Unlimited #1, pencils by Chris Bachalo.

115.11.01 Beast doubts himself too much, and tries too hard. And, scene.

115.11.02 That spilled drink suggests another difficulty re manual dexterity, with Beast’s new body.

115.12.04 Jean knows she’s an equal of her former professor’s, a contemporary, and she also understands that her husband probably does not feel that way, and can be bossed, still.

115.12.05 … As can Beast, apparently.

115.13.01 More skeletons being processed. And, of course, what Cassandra is describing here, as far as the decimation of a virus, is very similar to what will happen when the Phoenix destroys Sublime.

115.14.03 Cassandra Nova is such an optimist, but, of course, as with many of her predictions, this one is likely to come true, as well, given the right perspective.

115.16.01 Cassandra is infecting herself with nanosentinels here.

115.17.04 This mercy killing slash assisted suicide is an incredibly mature and intense decision, but does the heroic Cyclops hesitate even for a second?

115.18.03 The contact lenses are new, though they had actually been dismissed before, for reasons of the eyes needed to breathe. As a temporary emergency measure, this seems less an issue, however.

115.19.02 Dialogue and visuals cue the reader in on location, as they did last issue.

115.19.03 Doop shirt! Mutant culture is a marketable commodity.

115.20.04 This is Magneto, President for life of Genosha, and lifetime enemy and ally of the X-Men.

115.21.01 This Sentinel, as a fist made of airplanes, will reappear later, with subtle differences. Of course, loads of people called out the absurdity, at the time of publication, of Magneto being killed by a giant hunk of metal, but they were silenced by a bigger mass of people coming up with excuses it could be plausible.

115.21.03 The signs and ads, from She-Mail to Mute Eight, GM Liquor, all add up to, well, the kind of morass of meaning and meaning-leading meaninglessness that any mass of billboards and advertisements do.

115.22.01 The Wild Sentinels, looking like giant bugs here, reiterate the infestation and biological-class-reversal motifs. Captions appear here, for the first time in this story, accompanied by a dehumanizing inevitability.

115.22.03 The decimation of Genosha is actually part of the psychic condensation while Xavier is thinking/working in Cerebra. How much of life is actually Xavier thinking? Plus, he apparently thinks himself as a giant overseer witnessing tragedy.

Nothing Butt the Truth

2010-07-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, a guy told me (unsolicited) why we could never date. I was, in his opinion, “going around living like life is the last twenty minutes of Benny & Joon.” A few years before that, someone else – I think it was Chris Mitchell – mapped my life in a way not contradictory, as “the first five minutes of a porno scene.” And, while I dismissed them actively at the time, these labels do demonstrate some value in sorting the aspects of my daily and continual existence. A sense of perpetual closure and easy transition between scenes and solutions? Sure. What about, a frisson of knowing excitement in close variations on generic scenarios? Or, played dialogue with oblique subtexts, inevitabilities foreseen but kept just out of reach by that five-minute rule?

Sure. I’ll buy that, and why not? It would not be surprising to discover that my life is unnecessary except for a narrative to achieve it’s point that has a point, that my life is the building of familiar, learned veracity. Do I not feel the weight of a greater audience than myself, in all doings, at all moments, just as surely as characters in a porn scene would, had they the necessary level of self-awareness?

Is that how Joon – not Mary Stuart Masterson, but Joon – works out the climax and denouement of Benny & Joon, perhaps? A small glimpse of awareness, a grander perspective for just long enough to realize she has to play crazy but not so crazy she can’t get together with Johnny Depp in Buster Keaton drag and have that keen apartment. It’d work. It would. But, maybe that is a little too close to freewill.

An approximation to freewill is the only reason I can think of, that approaches remotely rational, for our recurrent cross-cultural concern with preserving a veil of irony to fictions. Fictions must not be knowing, authors should be discouraged from being sardonic, and we must clap for Tinkerbell, that is our role.

Let’s go back to porn for a moment. A frequent trope of contemporary porno, a quick google around makes it clear, is the playacting of a hire. Sexy youths of all walks require money and in these scenarios, they will be promised such – though not always given it, in the end – in exchange for sex, degradation, and their time. They need money to support drug habits, to buy shoes at the mall; they’ll even bang for books for school. Now, step back and remember, if we’re talking video porn, this is a set of actors going through the motions of a scripted story. These are professional actors, in other words, people who are being paid money to do this. But that reality, it seems, in ill-fitted, it is not part of the story no matter how true, and we need our true stories.

Walter Allen, a rather educated, knowledgeable man, spends much of his The English Novel discounting or belittling any novel that happens to acknowledge its untruthfulness, its artifice. Vanity Fair is a weak work, apparently, because its nearly-omniscient, and opinionated, narrator shares a joke with the reader every so often, and on occasion, actively disagrees with the author. It is important, for Allen, that the novel stand apart from its author, in terms of perspective and politics, but it is not the thing to make a production out of it.

By and large, we traditionally, and consistently, do not wish our fictions to be spelled out as such for us. We want to pretend from beginning through ending, forever and ever, that there is not a semblance of actuality, but truth and history, in there. Authors cannot pause the narrative to interject; no, that is bad form. Plot cannot reveal itself as a series of engineered and overlapping contrivances. Characters should never understand their characterness, their existence as roles and agglomerations of aspects and tics. Why else, would Shakespeare’s divine As You Like It so frequently be maligned as a jest in bad taste, a work designed to appease the ignorant or the unhealthily minded populace, because its narrative and its principle role acknowledge their artifact nature? Why does the novel, at least in English, run screaming with its fingers in its ears, from the developments of Tristram Shandy? Or, the Realism come to mean, by way of Balzac, a conglomeration of stereotypes, learned tropes, and anticipated superstitions?

Well, for one thing, it is often apparent that arguing with superstitions is futile, so what better mode of communication, what better strings to pull to get those marionettes up and dancing so realistically, than tethers that cannot be cut? We all know what they say about redheads, and why, there must be some reason behind it, if everyone says it and everyone knows what is said.

We retreat, not more deeply, perhaps, but certainly with repetition, to familiarities, to fairytale existences where existentialism and ennui are unacknowledged with a severity that may as well erase them. It is the short-term memory required of happy pioneering, that act of aggressive homesteading that is, by alternate perspective, theft and active displacement of whatever and whomever previously occupied this new comfortable space. Stories that blatantly cannot have happened, or that are incredibly unlikely, become uncomfortable, so that, no matter how entertaining, no matter how often we revisit, say, the story of the Trojan War or the Time Machine, the cheating of the Devil or a contract with God, we maintain a civilized pretense that these entertainments mean less than the very serious entertainments of how our social politics are reflective of innate truths and doing as Momma and Poppa taught you will be a yardstick of mores good enough for thriving in any decent society.

Nonsense, spontaneity, speculation or reexamination, these come too close to producing self-awareness, self-acknowledgement of the artifice that so many layers of practiced, and forever taught, veracity are meant to obscure, put down like golden fleece over the audience’s eyes, not only, then, to obscure, but to lull the audience in forgetting to even be concerned with what may be hidden. The authenticity of our fairy stories is a set of blinders that make us forget we ever saw what they hide.

It is this room for an anamnesis that allowed Post Modernism to appear, yes, Post Modern. It let Modernism seem tethered to a time. It permits us to think of our own culture and locale as contemporary, while some other corner of the globe is considered older, younger, futuristic or historic. How, we can speak of pre-Columbian for virtually everywhere but where Columbus came from. What gives life to recurrent stereotypes, creating neighborhoods out of social stories and imaginary nations from rampant orientalism.

It impractically behooves an author, an actor, a painter or poet, then, to assault this veneer in violent or teasing ways, however can be managed, without losing the audience altogether, for the betterment of our maturation as a whole. No, seriously. It is one thing to grow into perspective, see that Santa Claus is a learning tool about the exchange of goods as an act of goodwill (cookies and milk for presents, natch) not necessarily a requirement, certain behavioral codes and records of good and criminal acts; that he is an inspirational figure, and also, an entertainment. So we perpetuate the myth with another generation who have not achieved the metatextual awareness we now possess. It is something else, something that can only be considered a detriment, if our playacted acknowledgement of Santa Claus remains so entrenched, so seriously lain out, that we cannot ever vocalize, nor even intimate minutely, the fictive nature of the construct.

This is the defective thinking that leads people to actively preserve the myths of a historic figure over an accurate portrayal of them, because they don’t want to lose a hero, even if that hero never existed, or is simply the lionizing of a horrible moral mutant. The need for the fairytales to be treated as truth grows so intense, so all-consuming, that accuracy must bend to their truth. Christopher Columbus cannot be a genocidal gold-chasing thief with messianic pretensions! The Pilgrims, those Puritans, cannot have traveled to North America and perpetrated acts of aggression, cruelty, repression and, again, genocide; the third graders have to play dress up as those people and the Indians! And why can’t it be a nice happy meal together with centuries of friendliness to follow, instead of death and displacement, if that makes for a happier grade school reenactment? Why can’t the little mermaid have a happy ending? What’s this about changing meanings? Why shouldn’t fairies be small and powerless? Who cares if it comes out of a racist tradition? It’s not sexist, it’s just in fun, and anyway, those are real differences!

This Summer, I listened to a little girl tell her mother, both in black slacks and flowery shirts, about an exercise in school, where the boys dressed like girls and the girls, like boys. “The boys all wore dresses, Mama,” she said, “and we, well, I wore pants.”

New X-Men 114 - Close Reading and Thoughts

2010-07-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

The following begins a close-reading of Grant Morrison's New X-Men. Issue 114 was written by Morrison and illustrated by Frank Quitely, with inks by Tim Townsend. It was published and is owned by Marvel Comics.

114.01.01 The first of many critiques of (potentially) outmoded technology and techniques. And, having the Opera House in the background allows for a more naturalistic cueing of locale, than a caption.

114.02.01 First introduction to Cassandra Nova, biological twin and mystical mummudrai of Charles Xavier. Also, she’s lying a whole lot here in the next pages, and even Mr. Trask, there can intimate the untruth.

114.02.04 A fairly accurate description, not of mutants, but of herself.

114.04.02 Psychokinesis can take apart a timepiece. Can it take apart time?

114.04.020-03 Why don’t’ Jean and Emma have codenames listed? “White Queen” and “Phoenix” probably conjure some bad memories, both for the women, themselves, and for everyone else.

114.04.05 The blood on Wolverine’s claws seems to be coming from him, not someone else. Larry Hama established, some years ago, that Wolverine cut himself open from the inside every time his claws come out, but this is a rare deomonstration of a detail of that fact, and subtly done, too.

114.06.01 Beast’s words carry a double-meaning, obviously, and the shot of the school’s sign settles the location, again, without a need for a caption.

114.06.02 First appearance of the rose motif, mostly connected to Beast. Beast’s difficulty adjusting to his new hands is also the first of many references to detriment as well as benefit from change.

114.06.03 Well, earlobes are a bit of essentially decorative biology at this point in human existence.

114.07.01 The feminisation of Cerebro to Cerebra is the first of many references to gender bias/valorization. As may be Beast’s sounds-like-a-jest-but-isn’t about being “hormonally imbalanced.” It’s also another example of outdated tech and technique being replaced with new stuff that essentially does the same as the old.

114.07.02 “Beauty and the Beast” call out is what you’d call hanging a lampshade on it, drawing attention to the new look, which is inspired by the Cocteau film, while Beast’s request for a diet soda demonstrates the absurdity of some of his concerns.

114.08.06 Beast’s line here demonstrates again that he’s a little too worried some days.

114.10.04 Wolverine’s too hard for Dos Equis, apparently, he needs Cuatro Equis.

114.11.01 The blood and spent rounds are a nice way to illustrate that gravity isn’t really pulling down on them so much.

114.11.05 The plane and X-Men here are part of the condensation coming out of Xavier’s thoughts.

114.12.02 “Only a simulation of the sickening reality.” Except it may not be reality at all, it just seems real. Seems possible.

114.14.01 The panel contains other panels, but it also contains two different time periods in it; Xavier at the top and the X-Men answering with a panel between them. The change in costumes to another set of uniforms is acknowledged as cosmetic, and of course, Beast would know the difference between what the X-Men are and do and superheroes, being a former Defender, Avenger, and probably other stuff. Beast as lectured on superheroes at universities, for further he knows what he’s talking about.

114.15.01 New school term hints at the fact the school will soon be full of mutant students, as opposed to the norm of post grads and combat vets.

114.15.02- Scott and Jean’s relationship troubles are going to fuel this whole story, as will Wolverine and Cyclops’ inability to help each other without needling the whole time.

114.15.04 Another criticism of the wealth that goes into this X-lifestyle and opposing it.

114.16.01-02 Beast really is a sensualist from the smells comment to the getting right down into a DNA sample.

114.16.03 More finances criticism.

114.18.01 She doesn’t eat his mind, here. We do, however, see something else with similar speech patterns that is thought to eat minds, so maybe she could.

114.18.04-05 This is Cassie’s plan, or at least, a stage of it, completely spelled out.

114.18.01- The nine panel grid really does slow down the elements of this scene, also making them seem small, contained, allusive of the pressure that must have ruptured that can and is giving Xavier a nosebleed.

114.19.03 Morrison really loves his “AAAUUUU…”

114.19.05 “Are these words from the future?” is a phrase we’ll be seeing again.

114.22.01 Wild Sentinels. More varied in shape, willing cannibals of mechanical and biological components, and just as, if not more, effective than their predecessors.

2010-07-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

"The Right Thing"

2010-07-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

“The Right Thing”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The fourth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

“Strange Harbours” is layered in affections of authenticity that intrigue me because I don’t know what they add up to, if anything. The cover is designed to appear like an old comic, but no comic I know had covers like this and no American comic would have spelled the second word in the title that way back in the Thirties. It isn’t even quite a men’s or true sweat magazine cover, lacking in lushness or robustness, as it is. And, then, there is the shiftship that is uncovered, which has an implied ancientness to it, but one that is derived out of insensible affectations. The ship is made of ornate (baroque, even) worked metal and stained glass, so it feels old, seems that way, but it predates human stained glass entirely, as seen by the dinosaurs at the crash.

Maybe, it is as simple as the fact that a lot of people in this chapter are being misled or are actively misleading others. Jim Wilder does not know his boss and confidant, Anna Hark, may have directed him to the site specifically to trigger the hidden ship, via its beacon/touchstone. Snow has no idea his colleagues in Planetary are stringing him along, through his engineered amnesia. The organization taking responsibility for the destruction of a Hark Corporation building is an obvious front for somebody, with an inside joke for a name. And, of course, we will eventually discover that John Stone was in “Strange Harbours” disguised and staging the mugging that draws Wilder to the touchstone, itself.

It even feels antiquated that Wilder is so optimistic, so true and right, and goodnatured, in this world of liars and manipulation. There was never a golden era where everyone was straightforward and moral, as Wilder appears here, but it can seem that way, when we have the right rose colored glasses on. Jim is not so much an analogue of Jimmy, from the pulps-inspired group; he’s no Operator, he is earnest.

Jim Wilder is kind, responsible, and earnest, and everybody uses him! John Stone, Anna Hark, the Four, and even Planetary, until Snow comes in at the end there and offers to fund him. Actually, Snow may not be off the hook, either. Wilder is tied up in things Snow wants to know more about, after all. And, that’s a bit brutal, isn’t it?

***

[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories

04.00 With all the attention to realistic representation in the cover, those stars and crescent moons are awfully abstract. Detail and the cartoon communicating simultaneously.

The cape, sash, and lightning bolt motif across the chest are all visual indicators that this is an analogue of the Fawcett (not DC) Captain Marvel.

04.01.01 It’s possible that Neumeier, here, was named for Ed Neumeier, scriptwriter of Robocop and the satirical adaptation of Starship Troopers, given his insightful (and inciting) questioning of both the event and the immediate cover up.

04.02.01 Similarly, Jim Wilder’s surname may be derived from writer/director Billy Wilder, as well as being a callback to Jimmy (Operator and James Bond analogue), and our Captain Marvel exemplar. Billy Wilder did a number of films in which “doing the right thing” comes heavily into play, as well as Double Indemnity, which starred Captain Marvel’s real life visual model, Fred MacMurray

04.02.03 Jim Wilder is a boy(ish) detective, here aged beyond the typical early teens for reasons of sheer sensibility (and believability), similar to Tintin, whose hair he seems to have appropriated.

04.03.01 Jim’s an orphan, like many a youthful adventurer, Tintin and Captain Marvel, included.

04.04.01 Like Captain Marvel (and the writer-protagonist of Flex Mentallo), Jim’s going to do a good deed for a stranger on the street…

04.08.01 And it’s going to take him to magic other-place and give him special powers.

04.09.01 Note the figures embedded in the architecture: running with lightning bolts; shooting beams from fists; flying; standing with spear; an upsidedown Communion style gray… aliens and superhumanity in museum-appropriate drag, perhaps alluding to the Flash Museum maintained in DC Comics, to honor their lightning-bolt-associated speedsters.

04.15 The ship is orphaned, too.

04.18.01 Seven people to power the ship, is an inversion of Captain Marvel (or other members of his family) deriving their individual power-sets from seven patron deities. As well as being a reason for our Marvel-reference to gather a family of his own.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

"Just Us"

2010-06-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

“Just Us”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The third in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations will not include a summary but will drop spoilers without warning, as necessary. Events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

“You people came looking for a mystery,” says Shek Chi-Wai in the third chapter of Planetary, “but there is none. There’s just us.”

Just us.

“Dead Gunfighters”, the third chapter of the series, has the same simple message at its heart that many of the Heroic Bloodshed and Yiqi films of the golden era of Hong Kong action movies: Do right by others, because we’re all we’ve got. Chi-Wai was a man who did right, lived right, and he still died in tragedy, with family and a lover screwed over severely in the process. And he’s still doing right after death, because you aren’t doing it for you but for us. It’s that simple.

See, Chi-Wai is a riff on hero cops, but he’s also an analog for a very particular hero cop, DC Comics’ the Spectre. We forget, looking at the Spectre, that he’s a dead cop, some days. It’s easy, when he’s dressed in white tights (or is that just green shorts and death bleached him?) and a hood, being hit with the whole Earth by a devil on covers like Showcase #61. But that’s what the Spectre is, he’s a dead cop who gets smacked in the face with the whole planet. And, that’s what Chi-Wai apparently has to look forward to every day, each night, the whole of the world, all its joys and everything stupid and wrong, right on the chin like the backhand of an angry drunk just trying to bull past you, none of it for him.

The righteousness and necessity, as expressed in the films Tsui Hark and John Woo excel at, it really means something to me. It resonates. When I saw The Killer in a theatre (double-bill with Peace Hotel), we were the only grouping in that latenight showing who weren’t just using the showing as a pretext for indulging in exhibitionism and voyeurism, making out listening to others get it on. We were riveted. One girl had seen both movies on VHS, I owned The Killer, but we were just as stuck on the screen-happenings as the gal for whom it was all new. Hand in hand in hand through both flicks and full of equal parts swagger and responsibility for the rest of that night. A year before that, a friend of mine had somehow insisted on a John Woo Day while we were in high school, which meant we sat in a classroom watching Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow, all that good stuff, learning more important things than whatever algebra and social studies we might have picked up that day from proper classes.

Because, it’s true what they say; give a man enough guns, he’ll think he’s God. All someone needs to kill is one, though. One gun, one bullet aimed in the right place can change any game, alter almost any course of action. In a world of intimidation, rules and consequences, of saving face and laying down the law, in the panopticon of the world, trust should be resonant, shouldn’t it? If what is worth punishment after death is not the same, in your view, as what is worth it during life, I’d have to ask if you have really thought this through.

It may be too much to ask of most people, to live selflessly in respect to everyone, to first do no harm, and second, do what you see the person next to you cannot do alone. Not everyone can be blamed for, if the moment came, not jumping in to take a bullet for a total stranger. American police forces are not required by law or statute to actively protect everyone, for reasons of this very same unfeasibility. But, if you can’t stand by your friends, your brothers and sisters, and do right by them? When you burn your allies, majorly or casually? That’s something else, isn’t it?

***

[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories

03.00 The cover panel mimics widescreen theatrical aspect ratios, and the scene is mid-action to emphasis not the mid, but the action part.

03.01 Of course, the issue working with Hong Kong action movie tropes has a trailer/teaser.

03.02 The widescreen-mimicking panels here and the general atmosphere allude to Hong Kong action flicks, of the sort that Tsui Hark excels in directing and producing.

03.02.02-04 A cinematic issue about trauma starts with a montage of the injury to the eye motif and spent shells, with a smoking gun present and in hand.

03.03.04 Chi-Wai, who is introduced via his badge, is the combination of HK action flicks and the standards of Chinese ghost stories, combined to make a ghost cop working God’s vengeance… which makes him DC’s the Specter.

03.010.04 The Weekly World News is a real publication. They print mostly good-natured nonsense.

03.11.03 This conflict of music, and the positioning of the Planetary office near a disco is another nod to the HK action movies, particularly Tsui Hark and John Woo.

03.15 The Snowflake (or stack of hard drives, sheaf of pages, et cetera) is here represented as being a massive jar full of people. Reality is a bunch of interrelating two-dimensional planes, but it is also, just us.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

"This is Holy"

2010-06-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

"This is Holy"
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The second in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations will not include a summary but will drop spoilers without warning, as necessary. Events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

Trash fiction is holy. Our kitsch is our prayers, or so close a parallel to them so as to be identical in execution and interests. Yukio Mishima posing in his swim trunks for a calendar is the same Yukio Mishima who hijacked a building and preached self-responsibility, pride, and military before suiciding. Godzilla is not the trauma of the Second World War and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan because someone got cute sixty years after his arrival on the scene, but because that was how his creators and his initial audience processed him. Kelly’s Heroes and MASH were conversations about Vietnam, America’s hopes and fears about the war they were currently in, made safe by distancing it in a separate form. Across the world, we use new forms and never-was creations to talk openly and honestly about the things that amaze us and those that scare the crap out of us.

Jakita Wagner says, “They stood as a warning, really,” of the kaiju in “Island”, the second chapter of Planetary. No one knows where they came from, why they are or how they are, and everyone knows that they are dead. And, of course, one flies overhead in the end. Because our fears and our wonders defy us. They belie us.

“I know no ‘novels’,” says Ryu, “They are scripture now.”

Can’t argue with that, can we? They’re likely to be somebody’s. I mean, that isn’t even the prerogative of the author, it’s the whim of the reader most the time. We have all encountered more than one person who swears by some fiction, who treats a movie, a novel, a comic as if it is exactly scripture. We all buy into the small truths reiterated film to film, story to story: the urban legend, the city story, that drain cleaner cocktail, that loose parts sound that all firearms make in movies, et cetera. We adopt facts from fiction on the assumption that a throwaway factoid, if presented as such, must have been researched and verified, even if there are flying zombies or rampaging seven stories tall armadillos in the same scene.

And, of course, we get too witty for ourselves, sometimes, too pretentious for our fictions, and then we doubt even the truths as they are given. Explains the opposition to the Monster Group, carried into Planetary by Ellis as “The Snowflake” and the series’ preferred model for the multiverse, the shape of reality. The automorphism group based on the Monster Group, the Snowflake, is representative of all the planes of two-dimensional information that are perceived by us as three-dimensional existences, and there is good, hard science behind it. A certain portion of Planetary’s readership, highly trained and greatly experienced in understanding how mcguffins, metaphors, and Checkov’s armories function, cannot help but reflexively dismiss the science, then, from something which also provides an aesthetic appeal, a great deal of metaphoric content, and furthers the story while defining its parameters.

Familiarity, does not just breed contempt, it also inspires apathy. I have yet to see one person criticize Ellis’ science usage here on the basis of something like, say, the number being wrong (196833 dimensions instead of 196884), and most simply dismiss it because.

Which is how we handle scripture, too, right? We don’t follow every suggestion to the letter, we don’t believe in the integrity and truth of every story presented. We pick out the bits that work for us and call the rest lessons, metaphors, or era-specific, without necessarily taking the time to justify or reprove our decisions based in concrete evidence or functional analysis. And, in the end, the fiction doesn’t care anyway. The fiction keeps on, it carries on and continues without our permission, on the strength of its resonance – again, not with what we can say about it or without it, but – with those elements that we can only safely admit through the fiction.

***

[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories

02.01.04 Ryu (as is confirmed later in dialogue) is a fictional counterpart to nationalist/spiritualist types such as Yukio Mishima.

02.04-05 This monster is analogous to Toho’s Mothra. Mothra returns when needed and otherwise tends to sacrifice herself.

02.06.01 The apple emblem is the Mac trademark, the three-eyed smiley is an symbol of the Transient Movement from Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan, and Zard are a Japanese pop group.

02.08.02 Island Zero is similar to Monster Island, which was home/preserve for many of Toho’s giant monsters.

02.09.03 Yes, in the really real world, Japan and Russia have a history of claiming each other’s (and other nation’s) land as their own.

02.11.01 The skeleton is similar to Toho’s Monster Zero, also know as King Ghidora.

02.14.03 This would be pretty much what a dead Godzilla would look like if you stood in its ribs.

02.17.03 The troops who just showed up are bearing WW2 era Nazi firearms.

02.18.04 Of course the Mishima stand in and his doomsday cult would die here (in this place of dreams).

02.20.04 The giant monster movies of Toho are a deliberate response to atomic weaponry, and culturally resonant, in part, due to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the United States.

02.22.01 Rodan, whom this monster is a callback visually to, is frequently involved in a generational story involving a set of parents and their threatened egg(s). Rodan has actually taken in other giant monster’s eggs, specifically Godzilla’s in Mechagodzilla 2.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

"This is the Shape of Reality"

2010-06-24T00:42:00.000-07:00

"This is the Shape of Reality"
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century

[The first in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations will not include a summary but will drop spoilers without warning, as necessary. Events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at . If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.

This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.

This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]

One thing I find interesting with Planetary, is that, while three systems of power are very focused on (specifically: breeding, gift, and mutation), that education can be empowering is left largely implicit, though just as – if not significantly more – important to the development of the narrative and the arcs of our primary characters. Elijah Snow is a detective through his delight in discovery, in research and putting the pieces together, gaining moral (and corrective) elements only as they develop alongside his other pleasures, some of the nastiness and shortsightedness of the world around (him and the kind of people frequently running it) being revealed to him. It is as significant and prominent in every issue of Planetary as the power of storytelling or the importance of naming things.

And, that’s the thing people miss about the series, when they suggest it would be better served as a didactic, reactive prose essay. The best ideas of the series are communicated by example, not by declaration.

Axel Brass, like Elijah Snow, was not content being born with abilities exceeding his neighbors, he did not stop with a specialized diet and exercise regime handed him by his parents, rest on the laurels of an engineered genetic inheritance; he learned to go without food, to heal wounds with his mind.

The Aviator, “fought unknown things and black technologies simply to learn of them,” we will be told in a later issue, and in this issue, we see their group of remarkable individuals includes Edison, the boyish adventure spirit of “Electric America,” the inventor/adventurer. Jakita Wagner claims she works for Planetary because it “stops [her] from getting bored,” and it is implied that this is more concerned with physical stimulation, than intellectual, but we see from the next issue, forward, that it is primarily an aesthetic issue. Jakita’s flight from boredom into novelty is no different than Snow’s, except that she appears to lack the drive to apply her discoveries to further ends, preferring the immediate responses or admiring or hitting them.

Axel Brass and his friends share Snow’s drive, though, in full force – except, arguably, The Millionaire, Bret Leather, who sees his work as a crimefighter, killer, and newspaper publisher in Chicago as “serious business” he has to get back to. Saving the world from World War Two isn’t serious enough, or maybe it is not business enough. But, he, too, colludes to use their intentions and a quantum brain picking out a true existence from all possibilities. Shortsighted or farsighted, the best it seems the pulp heroes analogs can attempt is policing, correction. For them, saving is correcting, they are exchangeable concepts. So, they turn on the computer, the quantum brain they are sitting in, that it might generate an answer, an equation for a perfect world, knowing fully that the mere processing towards that answer, or the accomplishment of it, might transfigure the answer into objective truth. The world may be (re)made to fit the answer the brain decides on. The evidence may be generated by the deduction. The map may necessitate the territory into being.

The first collection is called All Over the World and Other Stories, perhaps, not entirely because the first issue was entitled, "All Over the World", but because, whatever that world happens to be, we understand, as audience, that it’s also another story. There will be others.

The definition of the real, the isolation of truth, the purification of concepts and actualities is central to Planetary from the first issue through the last. The fictonaut issue will suggest to us that we fear we are being taken over by fictions, being led by entertainment and imagination, and when we come to the JLA crossover oneshot, we do, as readers, begin to fear, as if it’s take on our protagonists as villainous cruel people might actually infect them in the main narrative. In this very issue, when we see the pulp heroes against the ersatz Justice League, the fight is motivated by fear of ending, fear of removal and death, though we know that, as fictional constructs, all of these characters will see new life in various mediums, with a myriad of origins and arcs, sequels and reboots.

The drive behind Planetary, the organization, and Snow, personally, is preservation. He goes out of his way to avoid replacing or entirely removing anything or anyone. This mystery archeology gig is to facilitate rescue operations, recovery missions, and exploration of the unknown, cataloguing the wonders of life and, yes, ultimately, preserving their integrity. It’s not about trophy rooms, running the show, policing the world, or even, ultimately, self-preservation, but self-sacrificing preservation of everything else, sharing what is admirable and useful in all the world with as many people as possible. The Planetary Organization is working towards a sort of socialism of wonders, not a republic, a monarchy, or even a theocracy of wonders, but a socialism.

“It’s a strange world,” as Jakita Wagner and Elijah Snow say it first, “Let’s keep it that way.” They aren't keeping it that way for only themselves, or any other set of elites to enjoy, but for all our sakes.

***

[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories, "All Over the World"]

01.08.04 The holographic masking of the entrance to a cave used as a preterhuman adventurer’s base of operations may be a reference to the similar arrangement DC Comics’ Batman has utilized. Mountain bases for secret plotting and world-action are second in prevalence, only to volcano islands, of course.

01.08.05 Doc Brass, Dr. Axel Brass, is an analog of pulp fiction icon Doc Savage, with whom he shares his bronze skin, his wonderful physique, brilliance, and willingness to institute himself as instantaneous moral authority.

01.12.02 The Vulcania Raven God definitely infers, Vulcania, the smithy of the Roman gods. It also may be a reference to Vulcan Raven in some way I am incapable of fathoming.

01.12.03 The “hull of the Charnel Ship” is a bit of a shiftship, but also, an allusion to various boats and ferries used to cross the river between the lands of the living and those of the dead du jour.

“The vestments of the Black Crow King” likely refer to the sorts of hidden-kingdom rulers Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four continually encountered, most particularly, Blackbolt of the Inhumans and the Black Panther, Tchalla, of Wakanda.

01.14.01 Analogs of the major types of the pulp fiction era that operated terrestrially and in the then-contemporary era (barbarians, space travelers, and the cowboy are left out).

Left to right:

Hark is an analog of the Fu Manchu Oriental menace. He is also named for writer/director/producer Tsui Hark.

Jimmy stands in for Jimmy Christopher, the Operator #5, but also contains a costuming nod to Will Eisner’s The Spirit, and has James Bond’s facial scar and (most likely a happy coincidence due to the abovementioned Operator connection) the name of the protagonist as given in James Bond’s first moving picture adaptation.

The Aviator, like the character for whom he is a touchstone, G-8, has virtually no presence and definitely no “real name” given. He pursues “dark things,” super-technological and supernatural threats, generally to identify and curtail them.

Edison is every Edisonian boy inventor hero, from Tom Swift on.

Lord Blackstock (born Kevin Sack) is an analog not only of E.R. Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, but also Marvel Comics’ Kazar (born Kevin Plunder), and every other aristocratic White man who was brought up from childhood in the jungle amidst subhumans, animals, or Natives. The purple of his clothes reminds one of the Lee Falk’s The Phantom, whom also had a cave base, aside from the requisite-here jungle-raising and animal connections.

The Millionaire, Bret Leather, is a callback to every rich angry man who fought crime viciously and vigorously during the era, from The Spider to the Shadow and Batman. He is morally conflicted, perhaps terminally traumatized, extremely dedicated, violent, and may possess the power to cloud men’s minds. He possesses a silhouette-inspiring set of tails and headgear, the Spider’s hiss and false fangs, and the Shadow’s false nose. Plus, his father was a costumed adventurer in the Old West, analogous to the Lone Ranger, thus establishing The Millionaire’s position as a Green Hornet reference, as well.

01.19.01 The “group of people in a mountain hideaway” are analogous to DC Comics’ major characters, whom together form the most traditional JLA membership.

Clockwise from the top: Superman, Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter, Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Aquaman.

Some of the characters appear to possess traits or references to other characters related to their mythos/worlds: the not-Batman is colored and designed similarly to Black Orchid, not-Flash is colored similar to Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash, Aquaman is physiologically similar to Universal Studios’ the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and as a shield-bearing blonde, Wonder Woman bears connections with Marvel Comics’ Captain America.

The threat to these newcomers’ universe is similar to what the DC characters experienced in Crisis on Infinite Earths, which served as a line-wide reboot of their stories.

01.20.01 The Man of Bronze (Brass) and the Man of Steel (not-Superman) are fists-first at each other.

The Billionaire, whom is quite partial to his special guns, shoots not-Batman, who presumably has Batman’s traditional opposition to standard firearms.

01.20.02 Blackstock, whose precedents are all traditionally sorts of ambassadors, fights directly with the Wonder Woman analog, Wonder Woman, herself, being usually an ambassador for her homeland.

The not-Flash is killed similar to the way the Barry Allen Flash died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but he is also shot with a lightning-like blast by a blond scientist in a labcoat, which is a common visual representation of that Flash, as well, being by profession a police scientist.

01.20.03 The Aviator guns down not-Green Lantern, just as he would anyone else using a super-technology to threaten what he wanted to protect.

The Manhunter analog kills Hark, who – as a Fu Manchu analog – may as well have been inhuman or alien, given the narrative treatment of such characters at the time.

01.21.03 Doc Bronze believes he is getting rescued from that cave around 1970. Doc Savage did have a resurgence around that time, including the fictional biography, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, by Philip Farmer.

[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]

Whatever Happened to... That Guy Still Releasing a Lot, Who is All Over the Place

2010-06-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

This isn't the biggest thing wrong with comics, being a thread where the question is asked, "Whatever Happened to Warren Ellis?" when Warren can be found all over the interwebs at potentially any and all hours and has released work under more than half a dozen serialized titles as well as oneshot comics, essays, short fiction, photography, and commentary in the past couple years. It's a pretty bad streak across the face and brain of comics' readership, though.

Look, there's an Alfred Bester bit quoted right in the thread, via Warren Ellis' Doom 2099, and no one ever asked "Whatever Happened to Alfred Bester, he's only released fifteen pieces of fiction and some serialized essays this year?" That draws unintentional attention to the seriousness, the heaviness of the problem.

We say, "Where the Hell is Alan Moore" when he's got League of Extraordinary Gentlemen coming down the pipe and a Lovecraftian piece, Neonomicon, with Jacen Burrows, aside from his massive music/photo/text beastie. Five minutes past some servicing of a corporate-owned character or chronicling a trademarked city, we declare them retired, missing, absent from the scene.

We ask, "Whatever happened to..." for people who had work out the month before. And, then we wonder why quality work takes so long, as if it's owed to us in monthly dosages. Or, if it's corporate work, we're owed conclusive endings or for artists, writers, colorists and editors to hang on while they're getting bored, losing money they could get from better projects, or actively getting screwed by a company, because, well, we like them on this book, with this cast, with this set up. And we are owed.

And if they simply don't want to do work on a monthly schedule, perhaps telling stories that do not interest them, with little to no royalties being available, and final say always with the publisher, because you can't haul off your Spider-Man pages and call them The Awesome ArachNebbish (well, you can, but you know, courts and stuff), if they don't want to do that, there is something wrong with them. Did you know Frank Miller quit comics after he wrote and drew Batman vs the Reagan Era? Trufax, all the way until they started making movies of the comics he'd been doing, released and available in many many countries and many many booksellers, for all those years in between. That's what our reaction, as a readership, looks like, when you don't separate one reader from another and take us as bulk.

And, oh, I know, it's because we all grew up on trademarks being perpetuated in serial form, men and women telling stories about characters they don't own. That's traditional comics.

It's not. It was for maybe, what, ten to fifteen years, between The Comics Code being instated and the explosion of "Underground" Comix? That's the era where the bulk of quality material, the bulk of notable material, was singularly owned by someone other than the writers and artists and creators working on the material at hand. Before that, ownership is a little hazier, as it's pre Work for Hire clarity, but you see strips in newspapers doing massive numbers, really moving the papers, which are sometimes owned by the paper and sometimes only licensed, you see anthology books, some adapting short fiction or nonfictional material, with the adaptation being owned by a publisher but not the original, or occasionally neither. You see tijuana bibles and single-panel comics in magazines or on posters. In the Sixties, you see the "underground" stuff, findable pretty easy for the most part, if you were in the right city, the right shop.

A Contract With God came out before I was born. So, if you're my age, if you are even juts under thirty, you never had that atmosphere you claim to have been trained in, you just had a childhood of it. Creator participation, ownnership of property, bookstore positioning for comics, have existed my entire life.

This is not to say I didn't experience this early indoctrination into worlds where everything is owned by a company and people are brought in to put new legs on or provide a facelift and a plot as it goes along. Virtually everyone has a childhood of that, because children's characters are by and large owned, manufactured, and kept on life support by corporations, they are advertisements for dolls, greeting cards, sticker books, action figures, playsets, water wings and home media releases. But, if you can get past that with your films, your television, your prose and poetry and paintings and stageplays, you handle it with comics. New episodes don't have to come out every Saturday morning, a director or actor's next picture may not arrive once every Summer, a novelist may not publish a new five hundred pager every year, and the world will not end, the material will not suck more.

And that's me ranting on a thread on a messageboard about Warren Ellis and a release schedule, because I'd like to see more like Crecy and am glad Planetary took as long as it needed to. If this had been a thread about Dwayne "He should be glad they let him write DC characters at all" McDuffie, well, this could have got ugly.

Assorted Heresies

2010-05-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

The best thing Tolkien ever came up with is Tom Bombadil.

I feel a little bad for people who had their minds blown or their hearts embiggened by The Giver.

Grammar can fluctuate with public taste, but logic should not.

Style is substance.

There have been maybe half a dozen artists who strove for absolute realism or its closest approximation and actually produced brilliant work.

No medium is inherently stupider or more prone to brilliance than any other.

Freudian analysis only really works on fictional characters composed after Freud expressed his ideas.

Heinlein's last novels were his best.

If you feel someone taken in by one of these Nigerian Banking Scams is an innocent who was prayed on, you have your priorities wrong (or you aren't paying attention).

When Glee isn't being pretentious, it's just facetious.

Star Trek, classic OrigiTrek, is at its heart, about expansionism. Unauthorized intrusion into someone else's territory is an offense worthy of arrest, questioning and punishment.

The assumption that anyone is so famous or notable that *they* couldn't possibly have ever met them, is going to bite you - not on your ass, but - right up front.

"The specific begets the universal" and variants are just excuses to tell every story through the nearest available set of White het guy eyes. Woman if you absolutely have to. This goes doubly true for every real life story of a Black football player gone through the Hollywood rendering plant.

"If you don't like what you see, stop watching for it," only works for entertainment. In terms of real life, keep an eye out and ready for action.

Fictional characters can't make you do anything beyond jump sitting on the sofa, blush watching a scene, or laugh a bit. If what you do takes more than three steps to accomplish, it isn't a fictional character (or their creator) at fault.

Socially-conscious fiction is infinitely better than socially-pretentious fiction.

The Exorcist does get funnier every time you see it.

Union Ethics, Tribal Essentialism

2010-04-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

Native Literature is not a genre, but it can be a movement.

Don't allow a press, a press release, or the bookstore employee shelving paperbacks to define and categorize your essential personal, cultural, and ethnic identity. Either all Indian authors are Native Lit, or we should all pick up our ball or bat and go home.

Let's spend as much time promoting Native writing of merit as we do clarifying the authors, talented or otherwise who are verifiably non-Native.

There have been urban and rural Indians since before there were White People on this Western Hemisphere; that dichotomy isn't getting us anywhere productive.

If you aren't acknowledging other Indigenous writers, especially those covering other ground than your own, you're out of the club. We'll let you back in when you stop pretending to be the only Indigenous author, or the only real kind.

Ethnicity doesn't skip generations. If your grandmother was Native by descent, so was at least one of your parents, and so are you.

If you are not Native by blood or culture, you don't "write Indian," even if you write like a particular Indian.

Having eagle bone whistles in your work doesn't make it more Indian than having an iPod in there. Indigenous status is not threatened by laptops or pizza delivery. Modernity is not threatened by bear grease in the fridge or that powwow tape in your glove compartment, either.

Schizophrenics and con artists "walk two paths" or "live two lives." Maybe you're just multicultural or an expat when you're off the rez.

Let's be good to each other.

FEM IV - Better, Stronger, Crazier, More Right Than Ever

2010-02-25T01:27:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that Future Earth - which has featured excellent work by Arthur Sze, Joolz Denby, Caroline Thompson, Melissa Regas, Anthony Max, Jan Beatty, Anne Waldman, et al - is accepting submissions for volume 4 (Celebration/Holiday).

All forms of visual, written, and recordable-on-still-images art are appreciated, and what we'd really like is your crazy stuff, the stuff that doesn't fit niche markets or warps conventions. We want to see your hardcore essays, intense poetry, wild photography, insane fiction, mad jewelry, freaky makeup, cool sculptures, and gorgeous paintings.

Got some art that is too scary, too angry, too cute for most markets? We may want that.

FEM wants to see work that changes people, work that shines light on new perspectives and cracks up old perspectives to see if there are bits we can still us. We want you to submit these works, because we want to share them with the world at large. FEM intends to always be as useful as it is entertaining.

We accept multiple submissions.

Please send to future_earth_mag@yahoo.com and check out the mag, again (why not?) at www.futureearthstudios.com hosted by former publisher and eternal friend of the mag, Daniel Rappaport.

Let's Talk Movies - Teen Movies

2010-02-01T05:56:00.000-08:00

I guested again on Let's Talk Movies, hosted by Tanya Lindquist, along with Aaron "Unkillable" Gabriels and the wonderful Laurie Ortega. We covered our personal Top Ten favorite teen films, this time, from Bill & Ted to Battle Royale, Goonies to Grease, with commentary and banter as you've come to expect. Plus, Tanya and Aaron plan Laurie and me's wedding for us.

Call for Submissions - FEM Volume Four

2010-01-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

Celebrate! Future Earth Magazine’s fourth collection will focus on salutes, memorials, parties, happy moments, and the occasional holiday. Share your short fiction, poetry, paintings, photographs, sculptures, novel excerpts, lyrics, sculptures, make up designs, holiday or party clothes! Anything supercool enough to write home about, that can be fit in a PDF (or can be photo-documented and the photo fitted into a PDF), we at Future Earth want to see it. Let’s make Volume Four something to celebrate!

Send via attachment to future_earth_mag@yahoo.com along with a short bio. Previous Future Earth releases can enjoyed for free at www.futureearthstudios.com or downloaded, from that site, as PDFs to take with you wherever you can take a PDF.

Spread the word! Spread the joy! Spread the bread around when you're loaded, spread the jam more when you're thin!

2009 Pushcart Nominees from Future Earth Magazine

2010-01-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

Future Earth Magazine is happy to have nominated the following five pieces/authors for the Pushcart Prize:

"The Ballad of Angharad" by Mab Jones

"Spring Poem" by Rick Marlatt

"DO THEY HAVE SUPPORT GROUPS FOR THE PARENTS OF WEREWOLVES?" by Ben Rawluk

"My life as a former headpiece as told to The Lost Princess magazine" by Heather Riccio

"Roast Egg" by Julene Tripp Weaver

***

As Senior Editor (a title with entirely less authority - I hope - than it appears to hold fast to), I am, personally, thrilled that these nominations in Poetry and Fiction have been made. It is to their credit that Rick Marlatt has been nominated this year for another piece, as well, from another magazine. I will not name the piece that received a positive response in this nomination from all the editorial board, but invite you each to read all of the pieces, available free from the website, and presume for yourselves, which is the most likely candidate.

I want to thank these exceptionally talented, unquestionably beautiful people, for granting us the rights to include their work in our journal, and to thank the reading audience for keeping the journal alive to bring the world new work by a variety of artists and writers from around the world.

21 Films from 2000 to 2008

2009-12-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

The inimitable Tanya Lindquist had me back on Let's Talk Movies this week, where, along with Aaron Gabriels, we discussed our favorite films to come out between the years 2000-2008. There was surprisingly little crossover (Hot Fuzz made it on two lists, as did Battle Royale), some controversy, and a few headshakers from each of us, I'm sure.

I've pumped my list here from the fifteen delineated in the show to a count of twenty-one, but, because I am still hesitant to rank them best to not-so-best or whatever (these are good movies, all of them!), they are presented here in non-preferential (sort of) alphabetical order.

A Very Long Engagement

Battle Royale

Cigarette Burns

Cutey Honey

De-Lovely

Godzilla: Final Wars

Grindhouse

Hart's War

Hot Fuzz

Ichi the Killer

Imagine Me & You

Inland Empire (and its excellent sister-film, More Things That Happened)

Kissing Jessica Stein

Masked & Anonymous

May

Red Belt

Red Cliffs

Shawn of the Dead

The Devil's Rejects

13 Going On 30

Zatoichi

To hear my explanations, discussion on these films, and the lists of the other the host and other guest on the show (and discussion on their selections, natch), visit Let's Talk Movies.

Celebrate With FEM!

2009-12-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

So, the website is being revised to house our fabulous and massive third collection, with its delicious emphasis on food (and all its relatives, like hunger and need and satiety and preparation), and Future Earth Magazine has never looked better than it does now, at three volumes strong.

cover of FEM Volume One, image copyright Maarika, design and logo by Travis Hedge Coke

Co-founded by Daniel Rappaport and myself, the inimitable and glorious Rose Hugh joined as an editor before the first issue ever hit the web, and remain two firm legs of the magazine to this day. We have been joined for the third volume by recent MFA graduate and talented poet, screenwriter, and cook, Laurie Ortega, without whom the newest collection would probably be chopped down to what you might call "manageable size" but really means "we needed more editors to not be overwhelmed by the submissions' cool factor!"

cover of FEM Volume Two, design and logo by Daniel Rappaport

In the days before that miraculous third volume becomes publicly available through the magic of PDFs and the power of the internet, you may be interested to read this interviews I unearthed, done early in the gathering of this collection, with each of the awesome editors of your favorite visual art and text media magazine called Future Earth.

***

Rose Hugh

Why "Food"?

You know this could be fun in many ways. One article could have a good blend of humour and great food tips. The humor part being the old saying that "a way to a man's heart is through his stomach." Also, food is something everyone is into. There could be tips on super-reasonable and healthy makings to the finest gourmet meal around.

What do you provide different from the other editors?

Hopefully understanding and a very open heart to many feelings and experiences in life. Life experience is important and I have more understanding now than ever before. I also seem to find humor in life.

What does "Future Earth" mean to you?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is where our Earth is at right now and that means encouraging "going green". Going Green is the future our Earth needs to move towards. Also, you can say it backwards: Earth's Future. What we see happening in the future.

I don't know if anyone has noticed but many Artists have begun choosing a theme of skulls and roses. It's like many people are at a point of dying to something or a chapter in their life and turning to Life, it seems to go deeper than "out with the old and in with the new." It could also be an expression of emotions with struggles and victories.

Future Earth can be most anything. A place to express yourself. Isn't that what Artists have been doing for centuries. A place where there is no right or wrong but acceptance.

Tell us a funny story about something you've experienced with FEM.

I thought it was really, really, humorous when I submitted a photo of the Statue of Liberty, one that I took myself on a simple instamatic camera and got the e-mail to end all e-mails saying that I had done fancy work in photoshop and god knows what else and was told to stop such foolery. Anyone who knows me, knows full well that I shot an e-mail back in full defense that no such thing was done nor would be done. I don't even know how to do what they were saying had been done but all is well that ends well and the photo was used.

What do you try to do with FEM that sets the mag apart from other lit or art journals?

Look for originality be it photos or poems or whatever. Something that people would see as interesting for it's purity and honesty.

If the four editors were Beatles, who would be which?

I see Travis as John Lennon. He was one of the founding members of the Beatles. He was known for "a rebellious nature and biting wit, in his music, on film and in books." Travis has these qualities but in a very refined way. He stands up and stands firm. I'd be Paul. He was the only one I had room in my heart for when I was a kid, turns out he was the "artistic" one and when he was with Linda, his deceased wife, there was no other. I am a similar type when I commit to finish what I start. I would be Paul because I think Travis and I would have that same "partnership" energy between us that John and Paul had. That's one main ingredient between them that made them so successful. I see Daniel as George Harrison. Harrison was also a film producer. He also "embraced Indian Mysticism and helped broaden the horizons of the other Beatles." He was also successful on his own. Daniel puts his faith into good and tries to truly help others when needed and he's got a great insight into the mystic realm and explains things well in that direction. Laurie would be Ringo Starr. He seems like he was the one who was very creative and contributed strongly to the band. He strikes me as a "show must go on" person and Laurie reminds me of that as well. She would "sing in the rain" and others would follow.

What's the one thing you want to see in FEM that hasn't been run yet?

An all-fairy issue. Nothing but fairy art, stories, research etc...and a country of the month offering traditions, food tips, travel etc.

What's something you never want to see again (as a serious submission)?

Have not really seen anything I object to. I know I wouldn't want to see porn in the raw. I mean, I like to see this as also a respectable magazine.

If FEM had a catchphrase, what would it be?

The "Future" is not ours to see. Que Sera, Sera.

cover image copyright Kimmy van Kooten, design and logo by Travis Hedge Coke

Daniel Rappaport

Why "Food"?

Well, hoot and hollar, why the hell not?! Since I am the one who came up with the topic, I shall elaborate. I am a “foodie”, if you will. The more expensive, and the more gourmet, the better - usually. Feed me frog legs, caviar, lobster, Colorado lamb, etc.., and I am in heaven. So, I was intensely interested to see what happens when we take food submissions, let Travis filter them out, and see what comes through to the other side!

What do you provide different from the other editors?

I don’t do much, lol! Actually, it is amazing how much the look that I have provided for the mag. has had an effect on how we operate, and what we accept. I am glad that folks have taken to it all with such open arms. It’s enormously gratifying.

What does "Future Earth" mean to you?

Well, I am certainly a fan of things like Star Trek, Star Wars, The Jetsons, and the like. So, I want a future full of flying cars, robot slaves, exploring the universe, and may I just ask.... WHEN IN THE WORLD WILL THE GOVERNMENT RELEASE THE ALIENS?! I mean, COME ON!! Humanity is certainly ready! I digress....

Tell us a funny story about something you've experienced with FEM.

Bunny April! ‘Nough said.

What do you try to do with FEM that sets the mag apart from other lit or art journals?

I let Travis run amok with the material. He does well.

If the four editors were Beatles, who would be which?

Actually, I think that this group of editors is much more like the Golden Girls. Rose is definitely Rose! Let me put it this way.... She has her own "St. Olaf" stories that are just as wild! Travis is, without a doubt, Sophia. While often saying that he is too old for this, and too old for that, her guides FEM with a certain, magical bluntness that you can't forget. Laurie is most certainly Dorothy. Her caring, and admirably mother-style personality do so much to keep us all together. And, since I didn't assign her to anyone else, I am most certainly Blanche! Hey, I'm proud to be a rich bitch!

Oh yeah... I also secretly dream about being Animal from The Muppets.

What's the one thing you want to see in FEM that hasn't been run yet?

I would love to see a run of commercial art. Graphic design. Interior design. Industrial design. Product design. Again, I would love to see what Travis would do with this stuff.

If FEM had a catchphrase, what would it be?

To boldly futurize - where no artist has gone before.

cover design and logo by Travis Hedge Coke

Laurie Ortega

Why "Food"?

Food is versatile. It can be the main subject of a piece or it can be a topic in a piece. It can also be used as a symbol for character's character: her/his personality, lifestyle, attitude towards other characters as well as life, state of mind.

What do you provide different from the other editors?

I’ll provide the perspective of a person who is fascinated by food in all its qualities and quanitities and who will remember her fascination of voice and story in order to provide fair assessments.

What does "Future Earth" mean to you?

"Future Earth" means arts are welcome. Visual and literary art and artists are embraced and fostered.

Tell us a funny story about something you've experienced with FEM.

When I went to F.E.M.'s first reading last Fall, I was overwhelmed and overdressed and overheated. Post-reading, when the editors and I went out to dinner, I escaped into an almost completely closed conversation (about food no less!) with Daniel. I thought I had scared Travis and Rose off with my Williams-Sonoma fangirlness.

What do you try to do with FEM that sets the mag apart from other lit or art journals?

I’ll try to do whatever is necessary to make F.E.M. have a wide range of contributors and supporters: whether it be introducing and inviting artists to F.E.M.., sending out messages to all of our members; and hosting and participating in readings. In short, being easily accessible—professional, supportive, and receptive—to potential contributors.

If the four editors were Beatles, who would be which?

Travis would be Paul

Daniel would be John

Rose would be Ringo

I (Laura) would be George

What's the one thing you want to see in FEM that hasn't been run yet?

I would like to see companion pieces—two poems meant to be read one after the other, facing each other.

What's something you never want to see again (as a serious submission)?
There's nothing that I would never want to see again as a serious submission to F.E.M. I believe that all art has intrinsic value because it captures a particular voice speaking on a particular experience or offering a particular point of view in a particular point in time.

If FEM had a catchphrase, what would it be?

"F.E.M.: Future Earth Magazine…The Magazine of The Earth’s Future.”

And, last but one hopes not least, Travis Hedge Coke

Why "Food"?

Daniel [Rappaport] recommended it; ask him!

Seriously, why not? It’s a basic necessity, you can spin just about any imagery, argument, or concept into, or out from, the central conceit of food. Food (and related topics, hunger and satiety) are, metaphorically and metaphysically, the core engines of much of human existence.

What do you provide different from the other editors?

I’m probably the soft touch of the group. It’s hard for me to not get excited about art, about stories or sketches. I’m like that parent who puts up drawings from not only their own kids, but all the kids in the neighborhood. I’m also more interested in the theme fitting the work, than the work being modeled to fit the theme.

What does "Future Earth" mean to you?

This is the future Earth, the one we’re living on right now. It will still be the future Earth tomorrow, and when we were making our way around it yesterday, it was our future Earth.

Tell us a funny story about something you've experienced with FEM.

When we were first soliciting submissions, I emailed everyone I could think of, anyone I was friendly with or that was suggested by a person I was friendly with. I figured, better to have a broad selection to choose from, for the issue, than be picky before the submissions came in, and risk missing something beautiful.

In those early submissions, I received emails accusing me of being a con artist and a religious proselytizer. What’s more, among the first submissions were headshots of a someone’s daughter (with a suggestion that she was “available”), a page of either random letters and numbers or an elaborately coded story, a ripped-off technical article on carbon nanofibres, and pornographic photographs of a woman dressed in faux Amish gear, with a hairbrush. There’s your Future Earth, right there.

What do you try to do with FEM that sets the mag apart from other lit or art journals?

I find a lot of literary magazines – and even moreso, fine art journals – are very precise in what sort of material they will or won’t run. I have been advised by editors at other places, in fact, to develop a list (for public or myself) of what I (and the mag) will never accept. You see in these lists things like “genre literature” (meaning, usually, they only accept Realism and material in the Silver Fork modes) or “offensive” (meaning a different thing to any person on the planet, usually judged by the know it when I see it method). My brain simply is not set up that way, and neither is FEM.

If the four editors were Beatles, who would be which?

Rose is our Paul, she’s got the cute with a side of inexplicable violence. Daniel is our John, complete with didacticism, focus, and experimentation. Laurie is George, in particular the fictional George from Yellow Submarine. I’ll stay with the group if someone decorates my drum set with flowers and I’ve got a hole in my pocket.

What's the one thing you want to see in FEM that hasn't been run yet?

Comics. We’ve done photography, poetry, paintings, essays, short stories, and screenplays, but there haven’t been any explicit comics. No word and image collages. I’m stuck pretending the entirety of each volume is a comic that the contributors were ignorant of contributing to, a narrative unto itself of vision and text.

What's something you never want to see again (as a serious submission)?

We have had some very ugly diatribes full of hate speech and furor. And submissions that came to us with more than seven different journals in the send alongside our address; that’s just insulting.

If FEM had a catchphrase, what would it be?

Submit now! Enjoy always!

I Guested on Let's Talk Movies

2009-08-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

The newest episode of Let's Talk Movies is all about Hayao Miyazaki and features not only your regular and beloved host, Tanya Lindquist, but also Aaron Gabriels and myself. We discuss his films, his film career, and even suggest some AMVs and new lifeforms that might be necessary to continued world happiness. You should listen in.

Inaccurate Covers Pt 1

2009-08-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Covers can be amazing things. They can encapsulate a work in ways that even the material they are wrapped around cannot crystalize in such succinct purity. I could repurpose Warholas or the covers of Chalet School novels around the pages of anything I write for the rest of my life and probably be pretty satisfied. There are covers, however, that fail to represent the material they are meant to illuminate and explicate in so horrendously awkward ways that you want to stand in front of a display shelf at a shop in the cold section of the downtown mall and just weep. There are covers to books, to films, that are so absurdly inaccurate you have to wonder if it is simply not ignorance on the part of the artist or designer, but actual malice or fear in operation.

For whatever reason, I've decided to consider some of these covers here, and this time it happens to be all-Heinlein (well, two-Heinlein, anyway).

Can anyone find the Black writer on this cover?

How about the Native American protagonist of this book?

(I'm assuming the green skinned woman on the Boris Vallejo cover of To Sail Beyond the Sunset is artistic license.)

Well, Why Not?

2009-07-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

My publisher and good friend, Daniel Rappaport talks Toy to the World and Pazzaria at Blue Fuss, asking elliptically (on the nose) some questions I hope the will be covered when Toy to the World and Pazzaria launches in the coming days.

Is it really damaging to children if two of their favorite characters of the same gender have a romance?

To have a governing body be manipulative and wrong... no matter how old, tall, or bearded those governors (Gandalf cough Dumbledore cough hack wheeze) happen to be.

To get political?

And, on the flipside, how bad is the classist, stereotype-reinforcing, middle class, faux-sentimentalism of major swathes of Young Adult and youth-friendly entertainment? How tiresome are I'm the boss of you/No, I'm the boss of me! arguments? Wealthy power-imbued beloved uber-jocks who have the cuties hanging around them endlessly, portrayed with a pretense of being picked on and downtrodden because they slept on an uncomfortable bed once and their parents were murdered? Petty revenge as an honorable - and just - and hilarious - element? Or, poor picked on pop stars, to have to lie to the world and their friends... because it makes their (fabulous super-wealthy popstar) life easier? Magical creatures used as metaphors for nonwhite ethnicities, non-het sexualities, or political factions?

They do this, not just for children, swapping in a monster for an oppressed or (perceived) nonstandard group. As though there is a sensible throughline of any functionality or moral lesson, in substituting vampires or werewolves for, say, nonwhites moving into the neighborhood. And the fear is almost always validated, usually with a knowing wink and some parental cognizance (see Wizards of Waverly Place's emphasis on not dating outside your kind, which means, apparently, being a jerk because your date has a back-end you don't like (in this case, a horse-end). When this is sold to adults as meaningful and intellectual, one can't help but feel the audience is supposed to have their critical faculties blinded by the sheer novelty of metaphor. The heck with that!

I can't tell you exactly what Pazzaria will be doing or how, but I can promise you I'm doing my best to make sure no one is having their intelligence insulted and that everyone is entertained.

Uncovered: a Pageant of Hip Hop Masters

2009-07-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

In the Riverside area in a couple weeks?

Score some tickets for Rickerby Hinds' Uncovered at the University of California at Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery.

Music, dance, and visual art for ten dollars a seat? You know you want to.

Subjective Journalizmo

2009-07-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

Parallel to this world is a world at right angles to that one, stacked on another like bread of a wish sandwich, wherein Walter Cronkite and Hunter Thompson never retired from the field in such idiosyncratic manners, no one has ever heard the phrase "It's only Fox News", and David Frost was never filtered into a retrospective popstar messiah with excellent lapels for an audience who can't seem to hold in their heads, simultaneously, that Frost is still a working, functional journalist.

The face of professional news is barely-restrained machismo and swish tactics spread across seventy television channels and increasingly parochial regurgitation of AP announcements, only on Tuesdays, and the alternative is not marxist struggle pamphlets for the perpetuation of the marxist struggle (success is death!) or crypto-capitalism in the form of fetish sites (success is death!) unto an infinity of authenticity brands.

Thomas Wolfe outlived Tom Wolfe, in this world, both men leaving behind glorious patrician-tastic bodies of literature.

This world also has aerodynamically sound and properly winged eight-legged horses, because... why the hell not.

Horatio Alger was unavailable for comment.

Ambrose Bierce was still in Mexico.

John Ostrander Comix 4 Sight

2009-07-13T15:33:00.000-07:00

John Ostrander is losing his eyesight to glaucoma. Surgeries can stave that off, but surgeries cost money.

If you've enjoyed Ostrander's work on Wasteland, Manhunter, or anything else over his long and varied career, please visit this site and consider donating. If you have no idea who John Ostrander is, but experience any empathy at the thought of a writer whose eyes are threatened, visit the site.

Inaccuracies as They are Taught

2009-07-12T22:16:00.001-07:00

The problem with the following is not simply that they are taught to impressionable students from often an early age, but that those students are frequently unwilling to shed their early indoctrination even the face of absolutely negating evidence. They teach the same lessons to their children or send them to schools to have others (who were taught the same lies and misinformation) do the teaching, until, generation by generation, these lies become self-evident truths, no matter how Galileo protests it still moves (or doesn’t, depending on the set of lies you were taught as a kid).

*******

The Bohr Model of the atom is pretty, it often reminds one of a planet and moons orbiting it, but it is inaccurate and we have known so since at least the Nineteen Thirties. Electrons do not orbit, as their pattern has no continuity of movement, only of placement (they appear to maintain a measured periphery).

Leonardo da Vinci, that great polymath for whom the term “renaissance man” was practically invented, is a painter, anatomist, botanist, musician, writer and engineer. True enough. What is avoided in these introductions to the man and his work is that he – quite understandably – was much better in some fields than others, and engineering (if one is shooting for practical, workable machinery) was not his highlight. da Vinci’s machines look great, they are marvelous designs, but do any of them work? Not in his own time or with the materials of his time, and rarely outside of miniatures, models, or reductions.

Grammar is immutable. There is a special Heaven where Mark Twain is refusing to duel with Strunk and White, possibly intent on shooting them in the back later (for safe measure). Okeh, there isn’t, but grammar is a mutable, bendable, growing and defecating beast that should be stabbed, prodded, and threatened into doing what we want of it, not what it insists is its nature that cannot be altered.

If (the right) scientists or governments don’t follow up on something, it’s because it’s obviously wrong and not worth our time. We hear that often enough, from global warming to cocaine in the veins of mummies or the very blatant and obvious trade, conflict, and relations between Japan, Russia, and the northwesternmost points of North America since well before Columbus hit the easterly side of the Western Hemisphere. Because science never bows to politics, and neither do scientists. Even those with book deals or government contracts.

Redskin refers to Native Americans’ red skin. This has fueled a delusion amongst many that, while the Eastern Hemisphere has a variety of skintones, the Western has one and everything else is somehow a violation or less-than truly Native American. In fact, the term is a polite euphemism for the scalps and skins of Native peoples which were sold to White people in the Americas and Europe for novelty purposes and to efficaciously reduce the indigenous populations where such White people might want to move and do business.

Gilles de Rais was a monstrous mass murderer and devil woshipper. He was also a patriot, poet, and friend of fellow soldier, Jeanne d’Arc, who faced a similar trial to his own, only to be absolved and sainted post-execution.

The Gettysburg Address freed the slaves in America. Except that it didn’t. The Emancipation Proclamation might get you the mileage you’re looking for, but even that document is essentially a rhetorical threat to the Confederacy and offers no dictates to the North or a cohesive United States as it appears antebellum or today.

The Western Progression of Civilization seems to hinge on a belief that White People are the pinnacle of civilization and it goes where they do. And that White People and civilization is the progress of some desert religions focusing on a set of stories and concepts held by at least three texts of today (the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran) with a throughline of Babylonian to Grecian to Roman to last few hundred years of Western Europe then their colonies. Cultures indigenous to Asia, Africa, and North or South America need not apply for consideration.

Brain Hacking Possibly in Need of Reboot

2009-07-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not even going to ask why CNN is running this, because CNN seems to think HUDs are new and innovative. I will ask, why Wired is treating as a news story, not a particular instance of neuro-hacking, but the concept itself. How many days past the development of NLP or the consumption of alcohol are we? And, as for hacking of the non-self variety... how long has Mickey Finn been in operation?

Names flicker past my eyes like I'm wearing a personal HUD, a hypnagogic crawl: Phil Hine * Colleen Stan * Robert Lifton * Allen Dulles * Richard Helms * Louis Jolyon West * Al Crowley * William Burroughs * George Bush * George Bush * George Wallace * Georgia * Gia Carangi... to the point my brain was full of policemen and Angelina Jolie movies.

"[A]s neural devices become more complicated, and go wireless, some scientists say the risks of 'brain hacking' should be taken seriously," seems to imply that the old-fashioned methods of drug, advertising, and reinforcement aren't to "be taken seriously." To reward myself, I think I'll go buy a Starbucks coffee, praise my nation as being the greatest, and eat the same burger as everyone else and always listen to people in authority and the right uniform. A few billion religious folks breathe a sigh of relief, and a slightly smaller number wonder where all their guilt and grief comes from, then.

We may have heard Scientology breathe a collective sigh of relief, but then again, maybe that's just what the anti-Scientology people want us to believe we heard.

Seeds in Your Mouth

2009-07-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Sherwin Bitsui's book-length poem, Flood Song is available for preorder on Amazon right now! You should secure a copy, so when it comes in a couple months, you'll have forgotten and the arrival will be a nice surprise.

Ignore the editorial review and its insistence that Sherwin "resist[s] being identified solely by race" (who doesn't, of those who are?) and focus on his strong body of previous work and the excerpts that have been released of Flood Son so far (including the brief, beautiful section we ran in FEM). His Whiting Award and Witter Brynner Grant were earned, as were appearances of his work in The Iowa Review, Future Earth Magazine, American Poet and elsewhere.

It's ten dollars and change. If I haven't convinced you, google around, see for yourself. Who's complaining? Anybody? Disappointed customers? Buy the book. Hell, the cover is worth ten bucks:

And the Eyes Have It

2009-07-11T16:52:00.000-07:00

I've had the benefit of knowing Melissa Regas since we were at CalArts together, we've published her in two volumes of Future Earth Magazine, and she just keeps wowing me. She's not being agressive or hard-edged, but her work is not fluff, either. The work is there. It is present and commands notice.

I mean, just look at this:

Pazzaria?

2009-07-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

You know that young adult project I've mentioned occasionally? Freedom, responsibility, and extropian analyses in a fun fictional package involving child thieves, slavery, an angry, micromanaging would-be god, and explosions for hope? The man who would be toy maker? The great teen terror of the isles? The children of Malivari? The iron rule of King Ferdinand?

What does that have to do with Pazzaria?

Anole of Criticism

2009-07-04T20:45:00.001-07:00

This short post interrupted other things I was writing. Specifically, I was trying to draft out notes towards a statement on the dissolution or perpetuation of novelty, the absurdity that techniques are considered experimental in writing decades or centuries after first applied to a language's literatures, and how fear is not a response to the unknown, but actually to the displeasing known.

I discovered, in the midst of that, that Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism is, apparently, entirely online and available free. People should know this, just as people should know most of Nabakov's collected oral lectures are available through Google right now.

Once I've slipped my ruminations into a more thorough structure and forced fluidity (or is that forceable?) and that will appear here (or above this, at any rate). Until then, just read the Frye, enjoy what's worthwhile in it, and laugh at what's horribly pretentious or unexpectedly (and apocalyptically) outdated.

Rhythms of Text, Rhythms of Voice

2009-07-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

I watch a lot of stuff with subtitles, but there are dub jobs I love, and there are dubs I will watch subtitled, because I love the sounds and rhythms of them, but do not understand enough of the language being utilized to get through without those floaty translations. Language is more than simply grammar or the enunciation of words; rhythms of enunciation are significant and variable intralingually, as well. Attitudinal and professional tones affect the aural experience perhaps more than the actual words do.

Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django is delivered in English, but even the actors who obviously can deliver with normative English pronunciation and rhythms (like the lone American performer, Quentin Tarantino) give their lines a flourish that dismantles the meanings of the words, until the dialogue becomes a delivery system not for the meaning of words and phrases, but for sound and rhythm solely. That subtitles are available on some versions of this film is absurd and pretty much misses the point.

Similarly, I don’t think you need to know anything about Tango and Cash to enjoy Stallone and Russell dubbed into Spanish. The pair simply sound cooler and smoother, and a gunboot is excellent in any language.

On the other end of the spectrum, the BBC Choice dub of Urusei Yatsura featuring Matt Lucas and Anna Friel - which is hilarious – significantly loses something, I think, if one were not at least somewhat accustomed to hearing British enunciation and conversation.

Somewhat connected to this, is the effect that subtitles have on the average American movie audience, which is to lend significance to the visual elements of the film while downplay the audio portion. There are parts visual conceits employed by John Woo or Robert Rodriguez, which are treated with a reverence that a film in American English would probably not receive, with exactly the same techniques used (as both of those directors films made in American English would pretty much demonstrate). This is not to say that there are not some brilliant flourishes and unique semiotic elements in these films, but somehow the American audience has been trained to reflexively respond to subtitled films as more thoughtful and meaningful than any other sort. Dubbed films are instantly a lower form.

When subtitles and a dub are employed simultaneously (as opposed to, at alternate points, as with the American release of Trainspotting) the result can be a jangling of the trained responses in the audience. The audience can lose its awareness, find its reflex intake at odds with the presentation.

I once saw a Chinese dub of Returner that slowly shifted the English subtitles to those meant for a cursing-heavy Return of the King. It was a nearly-religious experience, especially when lines would sync up and guns and rings would be confused, “betrayal” and “volcano”.

Naropa Reading!

2009-06-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

I'm reading on Tuesday night, at Naropa University's Performing Arts Center (PAC), with Christopher Stackhouse, Leonard Schwartz, and Truong Tran.

2130 Arapahoe Ave.
Boulder, CO

Admission: General $6, Students & Seniors $4.

For more information please call 303-245-4665 or email jkazimer@naropa.edu.

If you're in the area, drop in and treat yourself.

Towards a Contemporary Native Lit Manifesto

2009-06-26T13:03:00.001-07:00

(I am making only suggestions, here, feeling my way through what will probably be an ongoing series of bullet point considerations. This is intended to be purified, adjusted, and put into action by better and better-positioned folks than me, if they are interested.)

*******

We need to retire the word “tribe” and replace it with “nation” or “culture” as appropriate to the individual instance. The word implies a smallness and simplicity, and was probably specifically chosen over “nation” or “kingdom” during the European invasion of this hemisphere specifically for those reasons.

Faux or pan-Native cultural items and activities should be retired. If we can’t do our own research, keep our own cultures in order, why should anyone else? If you’re doing it because it increases sales or lends you legitimacy to throw in some traditional weaves and bone whistles without, there’s the door, don’t let it… you know the routine.

There should be a temporary moratorium on writing in a historical setting, as this often implies to the uninitiated, mainstream, reader that Native peoples only exist (or exist authentically) in the past.

There should be a temporary moratorium on first contact stories. I’m sure there are Indians living in the United States of America who have just this minute met a non-Native person for the very first time, but they’re probably children. Or, lying. And if they aren’t, and the scene was a narrative, would it be giving us anything fresh to the conversation and field?

Write for your neighbors. It’s harder to sell out your neighbors’ stories than it is the people back home or from somewhere you just claim to be from (or researched). And if you don’t want to write for your neighbors, what, are you ashamed of them? Too good for them? Or, just telling things they don’t need to hear or learn?

A philosophy or concept is not more important or useful because it is traditional. They are useful and valid today, or they’re probably best left to the wayside. If you harbor some delusion that the world was perfect and paradisiacal in some murkily-defined past… door’s over there, we’re busy here.

Native people have been dumped on too much, and we cannot afford, in life or entertainment, to be isolationist. We cannot afford to be sexist, homophobic, racist, or otherwise bigoted in regards to the existence of any person on the basis of elements they cannot help (noting, that people can help being, say, racist, and that it is not a built in gene any more than misandry is inbuilt). If you want to do this on your own time, we’ll deal with you when the time comes, but when you put out works of entertainment or information, you are – whether you like it or not – representing all and every single other Native person.

Let us not reinforce the stereotype that Native people live outside, beside, or behind any other contemporary culture or subculture. Or that our culture(s) do not adjust, absorb, or appropriate other cultures, even if ours may be unfairly or unequally taken in. The Simpsons became part of Native culture the moment a bunch of Indians started watching the show and quoting from it.

There are good looking Indians. It’s usually a non-Native person being kind and helpful to us, who tells us that “Hollywood Indians” are not Native (enough), usually because they are fit, or sexy, or have nice cheekbones accentuated by professional makeup people. Those sentiments are bigoted and absurd. And defeatist. There are plenty of good looking Native people. Some of these sexy folks are thin, some are tall, some are the bronzed barrel-chested sweaty dude with good teeth that grace the frequent romance novel’s cover. Except, they’d have – one hopes – the good taste not to dress like that. Native people, like all people, come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and shades… as they always have.

If you write a self-help book, claiming the routines are ancient and Yaqui will not make them work better. A basic prayer workbook does not need Indianicity to work and in fact, if it doesn’t work, that layer of proposed Indianicity is not going to make it work. Also, the ghost of Carlos Castaneda may appear in a burst of light and sue you into the ground. After Barbara Myerhoff’s ghost finished suing his.

As someone who has lived, at times, without running water or proper heating, modern plumbing and conveniences are as important and ambient a part of contemporary Native living. Let’s remember that. Let’s also bear in mind, commod cell phones.

Not everybody has a casino, a CIB, or is a drunk because they’ve had a drink of alcohol.

In fact, maybe we should have a moratorium on drunk Indian stories for awhile. Everybody knows what to expect from there, and you know what? I know a lot of Native people who enjoy alcohol to varying degrees without being an alcoholic or getting smashed. And the mythology built up around liquor, the illusion of some innate spiritual horribleness and malice needs to be retired because it’s an embarrassment to us all.

As much, as nonwhite/nonblack people we may be inclined to complain that too much of the broader entertainment world treats life and story as a Black and White issue, let’s remember that it is also not a Native American and White world.

Native literature, as with much of the rest of Native art, shows an intense tendency towards pattern being more significant than causality. Our stories, poems, and plays often require the entire work, in context, to be understood. Native entertainment has always embraced and utilized abstaction, metaphor, call and response, pointillism, perspective shifts, and deliberate animism. Regardless of what canonicity may be offered to works more closely adhering to White or non-Native styles and cultural tendencies, let’s not play that demeaning game. Embrace the stylistic and cultural elements and not be concerned so much that these may appear etic to the perspective of non-Native audiences. We play catch up with them, every time we engage a story, film, or music video from outside our culture, so the same can be expected of them. No one of these systems or tendencies, these methods of communication and entertainment, is inherently the default.

The shade of your skin does not give you cultural or community-based authenticity. It does not lend these things to anyone else, either. Some Native people have darker skin than others, some lighter, and this has been true longer than there have been White people in this hemisphere.

No matter who looks to you to be the representative of all peoples and things Native American, you don’t need to act that way. You should not take that role on your shoulders, of your own accord, no matter how strong you may feel the call to do so. Somewhere out there, there is a Native person who disagrees with you on some point or who has a cultural or life experience different from yours, and they are no less Native than you are.

Let’s not be ethnographic tour guides in our prose and poetry, okeh? There is no default non-Native (or not Native enough) audience out there you need to communicate Native-ness and experience/being too.

Just because your character lives on a tiny rez town, does not mean they don’t drive into a bigger urban area to a major chain store.

Just because a certain person thinks they have no culture, or are not close to their culture, does not mean this is true. They may simply be mistaken as to what their culture is, and chasing after something that is not culture, but heritage. Alternately, some people feel that their culture is modern, but a Native American culture (whichever, depending on the example) is rooted and (in truth) suspended at some time between one and five hundred years ago. Eastern Hemisphere cultures have all, including European, been affected by involvement in the Western Hemisphere, just as the Western Hemisphere cultures and habits have been affected by them. If this were not true, pizza and donuts would be very different.

Is your character wearing something in public that, in your experience, would get them laughed at on their own rez or homeland? Are they speaking of things that would make their friends or grandparents shake their head in disbelief? Are you dealing with these things in that light, or have they got some feathers in their earrings and a choker full of turquoise over their fringe-tastic buckskins because you want to make sure the audience understands these are Indians?

Let's try to keep any non-English used in an English-language piece useful and purposeful. Words from a foreign language should not be used purely to affect an authenticity, or in situations where they would not be in general conversations. Entertainment is a trade operation, and the only time a lack of communication is useful in trade is for obfuscation and astonishig the rubes.

Redistributing Distribution

2009-06-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

There's a bit in Hoffman's Steal This Book that recommends inventing a magazine or column and getting companies to give you swag for reviews and plugs that may or may not happen. It also suggests passing along swag you aren't interested in to people who might be. Forty years past that book's publication, the methods seem even sounder than ever. The only way you can believe that the underground mag, the comix, the zine scene is less viable and present now than it was twenty years ago, is if you believe in the authenticity paper can buy you. And - look, I love paper, I'm sentimental for different sorts of paper, for the dusty smell of old paper or the way newsprint can get on your nose - paper is a deadend medium. It's inefficient and the costs, monetarily and environmentally, are too much for us.

But who doesn't have a website, a blog, or a twitter account at this point? Somewhere on Facebook or MySpace that they use as a public journal or to redistribute news items and list five things they don't like to eat? Our phones and word processors have turned even our minor thoughts and passing whims into a globally-distributed news burst. And, that's the thing. "Globally distributed" is big, but because it's electronic, because it does not hold the awe and authenticity that we have been trained to perceive with paper products, it does not appear to us in its full grandeur.

There are reasons Steal This Book has given way to Steal This Wiki and, yet, remains in print with an actual price listed on the cover.

Amanda Palmer talks about how a donation-only gig arranged through twitter, versus the high cost and low returns garnered from traditional distribution means, and it isn't a fluke, either.

Some people seem to think these methods are new, or something that can happen once but never be replicated, like the internet version of cold fusion. Scarab currently claims to be "the world's first and only mobile literary magazine" which ignores both a plethora of mags and zines online and downloadable as PDFs, many of them (not just plugFEMplug but Steam Punk Magazine , Drunken Boat) free and embracing the fact that distribution is global and many niche niceties of a more limited marketing out of date.

People can download free lit journals, free archives of artwork, and read them on their phones, their laptops, or they can put them through something like zinepal to get a printable pdf with pretty dual columns and all that good stuff. FEM's been thrown up on torrent sites, the files have been copied and re-copied, the text trimmed out with the old cut/n/paste key commands, read on phones and printed and spiral-bound. If it's online or in a digital format at all, people will find ways to take it with them and move it around as they need it, just like people will rip movies from DVDs or dub them off VHS, or use filesharing services to move mp3s about, even of the oldest, most inexplicably rare LPs.

The difference in quality between a salon in Paris a eighty years ago and the state of DeviantArt's archives, as of yesterday, is measurable on a case by case basis, individual works of art by singular artists, not by the closed door nature of one or the open registration of the other. And free does not mean that (a) the apparent authenticity of print will no longer hold weight with an element of the audience, or that (b) people won't give out money to keep getting stuff that is only free at the creators' whim. Freakangels and MegaTokyo have proven that, and by presenting their material freely first, they generate a lot of prospective glances and ambient conversation, which a piece that remains closed until purchase cannot as easily. How many people gave Warren Ellis money because they just think he's cute or are afraid he'll beat them up, versus the people who gave him (and other folks) money for print versions of his Come in Alone or Bad Signal essays and rambles, which remained free online? I'd put real money, serious money, on those print editions selling because they feel more significant, more reliable, on paper, than they do on a computer screen.

The authenticity of paper, of the press, has long been promoted as a mark of accomplishment or truth. Lovers of early America go on about "free press" and "right to print", but this meant, neither that everyone had an equal voice in print, nor that everything someone wanted to print could be. Free press is free to anyone with access to a press and funds to run it, but without access to distribution, none of that press' outpour can get to anyone, rendering the printed materials pretty much useless. When the British dissenters founded the United States, hardly anyone at all was ever likely to even get near to having access to methods of print production or distribution, and censorship was even thicker and more collusive than it is today. The authenticity, the argument of quality or veracity, which print is based on, is a lie, as self-serving to the liar as all lies.

Does that mean, I believe all work across the internet, every jot tweeted, every tittle typed, to be of equal or substantive value? Well, it doesn't mean I believe everything put to paper and carried by a major chainstore to be more valuable than something produced and released via different methods, certainly. And, it would seem reductive to draw a line in the communications-sands at print on paper, as it would have been to draw that line at the transition from scroll to book, or to mark off syllabaries as superior one and all to any other form of grapheme set. There are people who prefer to imagine and insist that visual and textual representations by themselves can be art, but hypergraphia combining text and visual is only fit for advertisements or children's diversions, but there are less of them every day, and they will eventually have to accept that position as one purely of taste, or grow so far out of the conversation as to be null. Just as people who are incapable of accepting value or use to abstract or photorealist representations are out of the conversation. People who use a particular gender, ethnicity, culture, or style of dress as the epitome of modernity, the default of humanity, are out of the conversation. People who think that print is dead and nobody reads but check their text messages whenever one comes in and spend half the morning responding to e-mails, are in danger of losing the conversation. And everyone, but teachers, preachers, and saints, will be too busy conversing and enjoying themselves to notice.

Update: As I posted this, apparently, Warren Ellis was putting up the distribution numbers on several lit mags and promoting FLURB, which is online, quality, and free.

The Cool Program

2009-06-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

I think the central unifying factor of William Gibson and Pat Cadigan, or indeed, the post-cyberpunk slipstream in general, is made loud when Gibson talks about geeks and technicians, code-writers and code-breakers needing “permission to put on that black leather jacket and kind of rock with it. And now, that's sort of taken for granted that you can do that” (in an interview with Addicted to Noise from 1996) or Cadigan expressing the opinion that “So naturally the woman in Cryptonomicon is beyond feminism because she is too cool to have problems with men” (at The SF Site from an interview conducted in 2006). Affect come reality.

Because, if anything, cyberpunk was a reduction of science fiction to its social engineering roots (once more once), an expression of contemporaneity that Gibson, at least, felt was unique to his subset of authors and literature (as evidenced in the ATN interview, when he states “[M]ainstream traditional science fiction writers, particularly in the United States, I don't think they were conscious that they were writing about the era in which they lived. I think they actually thought they were writing about the future. I'm different in that from the very beginning I was self aware.”). Science is most centrally engineering (the combination of exploration and application) and Fiction is essentially nonphysical inasmuch as it is representational and not corporeal, so science fiction as social engineering seems as inevitable as affect come reality, as cool by decision, the inverse of physicist and professor Richard Feynman’s nightmare moment when a journalist would inevitably attempt to accentuate his science background with his talent with the bongos.

“Watch or be watched” Cadigan warns in Pretty Boy Crossover (or extols, depending on your take, I guess, on which side of the perspective you are looking from). Watch of be watched is the threat, the condition, the friction, of being. Perspective is the medium of the cyberpunk existence, as it has become ours in the extraneous electronic era (first, perhaps, protectively mapped in William Burroughs 1970 Electronic Revolution and the fabulous Phone Phreaker movement, wherein manufacture and use are one and the same. The threat and promise in Pretty Boy Crossover is one of being star (and starred) and being audience, and surely that is what we are now, in this age of Twitter and Youtube? Are we not all starring in our own films and headlines, producing news bursts for the public on a daily basis?

There’s an expectation in Pretty Boy Crossover that Gibson’s Neuromancer shares, wherein modification and communication are expected, if not demanded. We must be present, technologically, electronically, at all times, and this proves prescient if you consider how many people would be irritated if you left the internet alone, shut off your cell phone, for even a day, a weekend. Smartphones show us movies (however inanely small the screen and limited the audio), and for the high-end there are portable audiovisual arrays. Laptops, satellite-communicating navigation rigs in cars, Google Maps, not too long ago, I wore a heart rig that sent the pertinent information directly and near-instantaneously to the doctors who could do something with that info.

Technology is all perpetuation, but the electronic age, because it moves at the speed of electricity, transfigures this existence to less a trajectory and more the appearance of a wall of perpetuation. Gibson’s Case refers, in Neuromancer to corporeality simulated in this electronic/informational existence as “gratuitous multiplication of flesh input” and Cadigan, in Pretty Boy Crossover has her protagonist ruminate that “Like when he left the dance floor—people will come and fill up the space.” Space is not integral, and we are not integral to space, not like we are to information. Someone (it may have been Bruce Sterling), once observed that nobody wanted fully experiential porn, because no one wants to smell a porno set, to feel the twitch of infections or the hear the crew, feel the bed damped by the previous scene shot.

When Case goes into a recording of another’s experience, he fights “helplessly to control her body” before surrendering to indefensible onslaught of “stalls vending discount software, prices felt penned on sheets of plastic, fragments of music from countless speakers. Smells of urine, free monomers, perfume, patties of frying krill.” He finds that “her body language was disorienting, her style foreign.” He complains that her sunglasses aren’t as good as his might be. Individuality is strengthened by a removal from corporeality, from knowledge to information. As Pretty Boy Crossover’s protagonist observes, triumphantly, “As long as they don't have him, he makes a difference. As long as he has flesh to shake and flaunt and feel with, he makes a pretty goddamn big difference.”

Unpleasant or unwanted information can be categorized off to the side, ignored, but knowledge, experiential existence, is thick and irresistible. Thusly, does authenticity supersede reality. Reality is that, in an age of easy makeup and cosmetic surgery, ugliness is adjustable, but authenticity is unpleasant features, as Neuromancer gives us in its first pages, with “In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.” Ugly bartenders are more real. Molly Millions’ cool and prosthetics, her restraint and affect betray an inevitable history of manipulation and failings, here tied up with her history of selling herself out for sex and games. You don’t see a man go through that, in Gibson’s work, because men ultimately have the choice, especially White men, to adjust and customize themselves. Cadigan has lent this over to women and nonwhites as well, over her career, from the Pretty Boys and Girls of Pretty Boy Crossover to Darcy in Icy You, Juicy Me.

Icy You, Juicy Me actually comes out and nakedly expresses the perceptual imbalance of this social equilibrium quite elegantly: “She had been watching, and now it was her turn to be watched. Nothing was going to be right until she took her turn.” While in Gibson, it is always a man’s world, and Neuromancer layers itself with Rastafarian body-modificationists with earthy integrity, with invasive Asian corporations, with women who remain icy and unreadable even when they’re overtly lusting over his very cool, ubermacho men, the superwhite guys at the top of the food chain… Cadigan accepts that White Man is identity politics just as any other categorical other. And, yes, we are all othering each other and everybody is othering us.

I notice the words “ethnic” or “racial” and variations do not seem to be present in Neuromancer, and only once in Count Zero, where he utilizes the phrase “raceless… face” in all its amphigoric enthusiasm. I may not be entirely excited by Cadigan’s deliberately surface-only cultural identity and orientalism in Tea from an Empty Cup, or the deliberately underscored racial hybridization of her novella, Nothing Personal, but at least it acknowledges that these are (identifiable) traits and their informational quality as well as the physical actuality that we can disregard. Cadigan’s work seems to encourage a hermeneutic consideration, while Gibson would prefer actualization and integrity, hence, the protagonist of Johnny Mnemonic has to actuate his cool and his solid integrity by lathing his own shells and bringing his shotgun to bear, but Cadigan’s Pretty Boys just need to be.

Lisa Yaszek suggests (in The Self Wired), “[W]hile Gibson posits a broad binary distinction between commodified and ironic cyborg subjects based on their respective investments in official and subaltern histories of capitalism, Cadigan revises this binary to reflect her own concern with gendered forms of history…. Furthermore, while Gibson depicts laboring subjects who change for the machines without actually changing the machines, Cadigan suggests that subjects who attend to the intersections between bodies and technologies can use these intersections as templates to produce narratives or work and identity that change the machines themselves,” although Laura Chernaik (in her Social and Virtual Space) does not “find a binary gender difference” in, for example, Synners, considering instead, a minimum of a four-term matrix of “the repressed body, the laboring body, the marked body, and the disappearing body” while accepting that this set “with only four elements, in its turn reduces the complexity of Cadigan’s text.”

To be reductively didactic about it, I think Gibson prefers to see us living in a global village, in the world, and Cadigan, like (one set of) her contemporaries, that second generation of cyberpunk (Neal Stephenson, et al), acknowledges that global village or not, we live, shop, and stand on the curbs of our neighborhood. In the aforementioned ATN interview, Gibson posits that the world is “a very dark place viewed from a sweet and fancy hotel in San Francisco” while in the abovementioned Cadigan interview, she says, “As late as 1977, I couldn't get a credit card without having a husband to co-sign for me.” Gibson, as quoted early in this essay, suggests that he, being “self aware” is distinct from what he sees as a trend of science fiction author, but before that he claimed Moorcock and Delany as direct influences. Whether he got big enough to slough off his influences, or I am reading too much into the omission of influence or causality by the mid-Nineties is immaterial in the stream of understanding, because in that stream, localized flows are what matter, not the entire datasea (as Warren Ellis’ third-wave cyberpunk/decadent fiction Lazarus Churchyard called it).

It is immaterial that Neuromancer can be read as sociologically suspicious in terms of its publication era or contemporarily, but it is absolutely of significance when it is read as so suspicious, as untrustworthy in its representations or extrapolations, in the moment of now. As would be a Cadigan novel or anyone else’s work. Cadigan simply seems aware of this by the time of Tea from an Empty Cup in a way that Spook Country does not appear to lend itself to. For instance, in Tea from an Empty Cup, there is this doting and daring exchange:

“‘Christ.” The white guy rolled his eyes. ‘What’d you do, put your brain under the pillow and you got that instead of a dime?’
“‘Hey, it’s not what you think,” the Japanese guy said. ‘There’s a genuine creation myth in there. Among other things. And it’s all genuine.’
“‘Uh-huh.’
“‘I could show you the chromosome they stripped it offa,’ the Japanese guy said defensively. ‘One hundred purebreds got scraped for this. One hundred. In a hospital. This is pure pharmaceutical –’”

One could almost believe that has inherent positions about race, culture, or the validity of myth or industry, hospitals or creation. But, on keener consideration, the conversation is designed to be read into, to be presupposed and interpreted by the reader. Confidence has to be affect or it is probably worthless, and if it has worth, it is a worth that any other perspective, any other affect, can devalorize. It is the worth that Ellis ruminates against in his recent (and ongoing) Doktor Sleepless; “Your own bodies talk to your environment all the time without you doing anything. You can interrogate buildings and have conversations with objects. That wasn’t in the future you were expecting. You can rebuild your own fucking bodies with stuff you bought from the hardware store. You think that hardware store guy ever expected to sell anything but pots and pans thirty years ago? Bullshit. The future sneaks up on us. It leaks in through the small, ordinary things. You want a jetpack but you don’t even think about your IM lenses and your phones. Were you born with them? No. You’re science fictional creatures. Each and every one of you.”

It is worth and significance that Cadigan puts the lie to when she states in her SF Site interview, carefully reassuring us that it is reiteration, “It's what I've said in a previous interview with someone else a long time ago: that I insist to live in a world where the word ‘feminist’ is as quaint as the word ‘suffragette,” as it stands to a contemporary read, while Gibson is wondering “While we're on that, crack is a technology too. Why was that invented when it was? I'm really curious about that. Who did that? Who did that? How did cocaine suddenly appear in a form where you could sell like a $2 hit?” as though the causality, the investigation and not the recognition holds the importance.

It’s the difference between Neuromancer’s neurotic conflict between flesh and cyberspace, between idea and thing, experience and urge, or the circumventing rejection of our new cybernetic god at the climax of the novel, compared to the exeunt of Pretty Boy Crossover, “He keeps moving, holding to the big thought, making a difference, and all the little things they won't be making a program out of. He's lightheaded with joy—he doesn't know what's going to happen.”

Friends for FEM

2009-06-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

As an experiment, I am asking everyone who reads this to send a link to FEM's website to one (or more) person(s), and see what the peripheral array of new folks looks like. Surely you know someone who likes good writing and excellent pictures? Or who might like to submit some, but hasn't hit upon the mag, themselves? For their sake, send a link and share us. And if you're on myspace or facebook or wherever, tribe, et al, throw out a link to us. Half of this is advertising cheaply, yes, but the other half is just me being curious if there will be a noticeable difference between the regulars and the results of this outreach.

www.futureearthstudios.com - it's that simple a url and Future Earth Magazine will love you more for the effort, even though we already love all of y'all pretty fierce.

Fellini on Comics and Cross-Medium Translation

2009-05-29T06:42:00.001-07:00

Frederico Fellini once commented, "Comics and the ghostly fascination of those paper people, paralyzed in time, marionettes without strings, unmoving, cannot be transposed to film, whose allure is motion, rhythm, dynamic. It is a radically different means of addressing the eye, a different mode of expression. The world of comics may, in its generosity, lend scripts, characters and stories to the movies, but not its inexpressible secret power of suggestion that resides in that fixity, that immobility of a butterfly on a pin."

Which, has me wondering about my desire to write fiction that reads like good rock sounds and whether the sentence-equivalent of Jimi Hedrix's guitar and kazoo is really a functional goal. Luckily, entertainment does not have to be functional in its goals, and the only real concern is that the end product is entertaining

I definitely wish prose writers, comics creators, and other artists would stop trying to ape highly middle class cinema, though. In that same way that, once you can stick a fork in the Silver Fork novel and its descendants, and it doesn't bleed, if the light and motion of film is not resonating in your comic or novel, maybe that avenue is no longer the one to walk and you should try using the forms for the things they can do that other mediums cannot. The spontaneity, immediacy, and worlds that a word can hold, that an item of punctuation can demand, are not equal to, nor comparable by, the sound and vision of a staged scene, nor the frozen imagery of a painting. And thank God, polymaths, and diversity for that!

Soul Mountain - Toward a Future Earth

2009-05-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

Toward a Future Earth: New Poetry from Native American Voices is a reading at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT, at three in the afternoon on the seventh of June. For nine bucks you can hear great work from Santee Frazier, Jennifer Foerster, dg okpik, Lara Mann, James Stevens, and me, who are being hosted at the Soul Mountain Retreat by the beyond wonderful Marilyn Nelson.

Florence Griswold Museum
96 Lyme Street
Old Lyme, CT 06371
860-434-5542 tel
860-434-9778 fax

Sensationalism in Perspective

2009-05-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

Do we downplay excitement and pleasure because we are ashamed to be excited? Exclamation marks are bad, you understand, and displays of loud thrill, such as declarations of adoration, admiration, or just how kickass marvelously splendid something is. Especially if this this is always around, like dry leaves rattling across pavement on a midmorning breeze. Like, birds. Hummingbirds are cool! Roadrunners and sandpipers are cool! Crows! Hawks! Pigeons are fucking great! Look at them, they've got wings and make noise and... GREAT! But we can't say that, because then we would have to admit these cool things are around all the time and the world would look fun or something. Can't have that.

I want you try something for me, will you? While you read this, I want you to start admitting everything you are feeling. Don't take it in all at once. Start with the tops of your feet, just before the toes. What's the skin touching? What's the texture, the temperature? Is there movement? And how 'bout them toes? Wiggling free in the cool air? Hot under wool socks? Pushing against the inside of a shoe? What does you mouth taste like while your feet are feeling all that? How does the cloth set on your legs (if you've got any there)? Is the air conditioning running? If it is, you can probably hear and feel it, but can you hear the air outside? The street? The people chatting at the home next to yours? Somebody else's television set? Your mouth has a texture, yeah, while you are looking at this screen, reading these words? And your hands and your arms and you chest and thighs are all touching stuff, be it cloth, air, what have you. The heat is not uniform, and it moves. When was the last time you ate? Can probably smell the floor from where you are sitting, eyes on this, mouth wet or dry, full of temperature and shifty in your throat, the sounds of your heart, blood and digestion. Have you got the taste of your last meal on your teeth? Which ends of your hair do you feel more, the loose ends or those stuck in your skin? How much shampoo, aftershave, cocoa butter, lotions or perfumes can you smell? How many from you, and what's coming from whomever else is there with you? Scents and temperatures of people there, smells and heat from people who have gone by, just admit to it all. Admit to it all at once.

Take in every sensation you are getting now. Admit to the moment. Now put a world of birds, elephants, pine trees and Argentina, robots, rocketships, organ transplants, rock and roll, ice cream, viridian, and radio waves around that.

Now, the consistent use of exclamation marks devalues what? Sensationalism?

Useful as Teats on a Robot

2009-05-07T21:12:00.000-07:00

Someone asked, “Why would you put teats on a robot?” and I realized a few things. The first is that I should probably never be allowed to design robots. Secondly, we gender everything (or a certain syrup brand would be bottled different and less ships would be “her”). Beyond those, was a simple recognition of the long and tortuous history of body modification; that it is here, has been since the beginning of people, and that denouncements almost always ring with a neo-luddite fervor and actual concerns over impingement on health or society.

In Lester del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, when two men put sex organs on a utensil, it becomes a woman for them. When a woman (her brain, at least) is put into a utensil in C.L. Moore’s No Woman Born, two men in the story acknowledge the artifice, instead. It is not only fictional characters, really. We see dehumanization in any physical modification, as though tool-based species is not going to enhance themselves more directly than the use of a fork and knife. This is why Richard Appignanesi (in Introducing Postmodernism and elsewhere), attributes cyborg qualities to Arnold Schwarzenegger as a human being because of a role he played in a film and not the physical enhancements he has undergone through anabolic steroids or open-heart surgery. It is why someone will invariably downgrade a person who has breast implants, not because of the international study that demonstrates women with augmentation mammoplasty are 4.5 times more likely to commit suicide than otherwise (which would be a specious argument, anyway, depending as it does on an unrealistic causality chain), but because they are trying to be something they are not.

Lots of people recoil from breast/pectoral implants, from the artificial hand, from tattoos. These modifications distress us not because they seem to have something negative to imply about the person, but because of what they imply about the person exposed to them. I have seen people appear afflicted by someone else’s tattoos. I watched a woman once tell an amputee she did not see why he needed a new and better hand since he already had a three-fingered prosthetic of decade-old design. Getting above their station, these people.

That seems to be the real concern, the ungendering or dehumanizing that the two men in No Woman Born believe to be happening with Deirdre; she is getting above her station. She has a brain, a history, and a will, yet her current body allows her range she was previously denied. Her dependency on the two men is now weighted less than their continued dependence on her (as procedural, or performing, meal ticket). Who thinks of this in terms of themselves? If I had a stool, I could reach that shelf and would never have to ask for help again! The horror! We augment ourselves daily, hourly, and apparently, so long as it never breaks boundaries or skin… but, if it has to break skin, if the flesh must be permeated or reevaluated, it has to be on authorized terms. Who authorizes is not the question; they just do.

And we wonder why our parents sometimes made us walk instead of carrying us everywhere. Or had us fetch our own drink from the kitchen.

It is sort of drastically different between No Woman Born and Helen O’Loy, in terms of need. Perhaps, unfairly so. Phil and Dave, in Helen O’Loy, require an externalized apparatus to help make daily life easier and gender it because, apparently, gendering things is fun. The robot is soft and fun to look at (and do other things to, as the story progresses) because it is enjoyable for the two users. In the other story, Deirdre requires the apparatus for the express and immediate purpose of not dying. Not dying also makes life easier, and is generally more fun than being dead (I would assume), but are the benefits, in toto, of the mechanism any differently deserved?

At what Gnostic paranoid moment did such a bulk of the human species as have, decide that our only right was towards survival? Why does No Woman Born’s “had she needed eyes” cut us to the quick? Where did “be happy with what you have” come from, except from those who had better? I suppose, there are also those who indulge and find pleasure in suffering, hardship, and other things counterproductive but good for any community operating under a parent/god hierarchy of patrician/priests, but they tend to have runaways, modifications, allowances, or they die out. The haves, if you will, they do not die out.

Warren Ellis’ addendum to the classic Asimov Three Laws of Robotics was something like, “Robots do not give a shit about you.” This may not be true (it is yet not verifiable, certainly), but it seems likely, especially considered on the basic level of tools. Robots are tools, whether they be complete forms walking about, a mechanical arm swinging through a factory building engines, or a mechanical arm swinging by your side, fitted to the scarred stump that still feels attached to meat and nerves you miss some Sunday afternoons, when the sun falls between cloud and hill just right.

We fear internalization in irrational, purity-based ways. Injection is always considered seedier than if the heroin user simply swallowed – or somehow other got – their intake. We wear knee guards and back braces, but cringe at the idea of having the knee swapped out for something better. Putting an RIF tag in your hand to activate your indoor lighting and heating as you touch the knob of your front door is illegal in some places! Pegging became the tabloid/internet proof of latent or repressed homosexuality (and therefore verifiably wrong for a default heterosexual, whom presumably must treat the orifice as all healthy socially-acceptable people treat pelvic orifices – something to ignore unless cleaning, taking care of scents, and letting the doctor have a look).

Deirdre, in the Moore story, is entirely internalized because she is all external now. Her “featureless head” and “robe of chainmail” leave others with no familiar anthropomorphized anchors to weight themselves with, to secure themselves to her in any sympathetic way. She can put on the actions, herself, get the message across, but it is artifice, practices artifice, and has none of the necessity we may read into a familiar fleshed face, the generalities assumed with naked gender. The two men respond to her as if she wore a chastity belt over her soul, and while at the end of the story, Deirdre does admit to feeling locked in, distanced from humanity, but it’s locked up with her concept of the present, of an expected, a stasis (“My brain will wear out in another forty years or so. Between now and then I’ll learn… I’ll change… I’ll know more than I can guess today.”).

The case is not so much that she will “change – That’s frightening,” as Deirdre states and then belies with “There’s so much still untried.” Where the fear comes in, is that no one else can come along. Which, is where the return to the stage, the performing – and, specifically, performing old routines – comes in so strongly, as a desperate linkage to present/past familiarity, and to maintain a semblance of dialogue, of interdependence and interaction with the rest of people. Helen O’Loy operates oppositely; if it were not for replicated televisual tropes and tired charades, what interaction would she have, what dependence on, or awareness of, these fleshy womb-birthed meat puppets?

Both del Rey and Moore are examining the extropic notion of pleasure and relief through tool-based means, but their representation of human reaction seems at a slight remove, each from the other. The men who conceive Helen are blind to the fact that, as they benefit from their pretty and predictable tool, they appear excessive and fetishistic to an outside perspective, i.e. the reader (who is, by definition, excessive and fetishistic, putting unnecessary effort towards these artifices bestowed unreasonable facsimiles of truth). Deirdre, in the Moore, similarly benefits from a pretty and predictable (in that it is directed and inhabited by her) tool, and is faced with an external audience (Harris and Maltzer, at the least) whom find her excessive and fetishistic, especially when she recreates old patterns with her new untenable form.

The reaction, to a non-wielding party, to a complicated tool in hand, it would seem, is the same as the general reflexive reaction to a most primitive technology possessed by another: My God, they’ve got a knife! We don’t know what they intend to do with it, but the potential scares us because we, with our empty hands, do not have it. And when the tool is body, we never know if it is truthful, if it has authenticity as we crave it. “A marionette? Or the real grace and loveliness shining through?” as No Woman Born phrases the fear.

Shooting an unarmed opponent is not sporting, not fair. “Fair” is important, because it implies truth. Justified truth is greater than abject reality. Small Poxing the unexposed masses to death is unsporting. Russian pencils defeating American ballpoints in the space race is cheating. Oscar Pistorius, the racing double-amputee has an “unfair advantage” in his replacement limbs. Take you up to the point, fine, but when you surpass: wrong. Untruthful. Unreal.

And this is what the cyborg, the android, the artificial person of all arrangements seems to eventually come to recognize, before they machine us. This is why the robots of Capek’s R.U.R. revolt in imitation, why the robots of Asimov learn to best be tools for us, they must utilize human beings as tools, that a society of beasts reshaped as human society must mirror and devalorize human society into the shapes of beasts. Helen O’Loy learns to direct people for her pleasure and expectation as she was designed to placate theirs. Deirdre, performing sensation, manufactures and manipulates – steers – her audience of one, two, or ten thousand. As dualities accede to admittance of symmetries and simultaneities, control becomes what?

Late in Helen O’Loy, Phil considers that “maybe all thought is a series of conditioned reflexes,” and in this thought he carefully – and not consciously – excludes himself (or his fellows) from consideration. Other people’s thoughts may be discounted in this way, but he avoids that his own ideas or reactions could be the results of programming as much as the mechanical maid, bride, and entertainment system he and his housemate and coworker had jury rigged with tear ducts and a digestive tract, aside from the already questionable teats and flesh-fabrications that allow her, not only to “simulate every human action,” but to be “ready to simulate every human action.”

If it is built or machined, it is replaceable. Right? Not just modifiable, but replaceable. Bill Cosby’s cruel joke of “"I made you, I bought you into this world, and I can take you out, and I can make another one that looks just like you." The suggestion shared by Moore and del Rey’s stories is that the tools we ourselves possess may be unsatisfactory at their base, because they can be improved upon only inasmuch as they can be pushed around, reorganized, repurposed.

In the del Rey, one of the characters suggests, “[W]e’ll get around to it. Put in some mechanical emotions or something,” but the best they can do is not, synthesize, but extend and transplant, as the endocrinologist Phil knows intimately. It is all about parts and extension, but like a picture mutilated and collaged back together, once those new breaks, new segmentations, are established, no matter how closely glued back together, how accurately recomposed, the newness and strangeness remains. The perspective has changed.

Nothing but the perspective need have changed. I am thinking of the Hans Moravec quote, “Assuming that a human being is fully explained by the physical interaction of his parts… suppose you took a human being and started replacing his natural parts with equivalently functional artificial parts, and you did this on a very small scale, neuron by neuron, or whatever. At the end what you’d have would be something that still worked the same.” That is all that is required for the fear to come in, and that fear is partially because, the recognition reduces us to admitting the basic anarchic state of existence. We have laws because we agree to them, customs because of wont, but even with the foreknowledge of fallout or aftereffects, we do what we do because of desire and impulse. We have done what we have done, because it is done, with desire, impulse, and awareness all incapable of invalidating the event(s).

Causality and planning both are nonessential to present perception, to abject truth. Robotics – moreso than most tools, as they replicate or share our forms and bits, so frequently – remind us for change and of impermanence. The minute we build a machine that can comprehend its own state enough to rebuild or reconsider it, or that can do the job of what good, honest flesh and bone once might have, our superfluousness is where our thoughts turn, so why not the robot’s? Robots could grow impatient with us as we grow impatient with us, as anyone who has used heated running water becomes impatient with drawing from a well, or how we tire so using a five year old computer.

The change is frightening (and intriguing) because it is indicative of inevitably existing further avenues of alteration and the frustrated acknowledgement that going back is always unsatisfactory when it is necessity. The altered perspective may see changes of an entirely different horizon than those from the unaltered, and yet divergence will never have the good taste to leave either ignorant of the trajectory of the other, unless we, too, become unquestioning, unaware automatons that other seeks to anthropomorphize with the care or moral imperative of Asimov’s attentive nannies, Wells’ Moreau, or the reader of a C.L. Moore story, a Lester del Rey short, imbuing humanity on artifice for our own sake and reinforcement of purpose.

FEM 2: Fairytales

2009-05-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

The second volume of Future Earth Magazine is now available from the website as a pdf! With a focus on fairytales, it includes a series of fabulous paintings by Melissa Regas and others Anthony Max, poetry by Adrian Castro and Zita Muranyi, photography by Allison Hedge Coke and Joseph Boeing, as well as, of course, exceptional visual and written art from lots of other folks, including Caroline Thompson, Mab Jones, Charles Brooks III, Zachary Kluckman, Nicole Peters, Heather Riccio, Jon Walter, Ann Marie Trietley, Malcolm R Campbell, Daniela Gioseffi, Kimberly L Becker, Ching-In Chen, Kathryn Mueller, and more!

We are still accepting submissions for Volume Three (focusing on food, glorious food) and Vol. One remains available for free download as well.

Bonus points to anyone who promotes us via a link or blurb, or who throws up the file on their preferred torrent site.

Buy Me!

2009-04-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

Second printing has apparently happened. Available in stores, at Amazon, and from the publisher's website directly. Amazon is apparently selling new copies for cheaper than used for some reason. Featuring me, LeAnne Howe, Eddie Chuculate, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Simon Ortiz, Danny Romero, and loads of other folks. Yes, you should buy it.

FEM 2: Fairytales

2009-04-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Featuring Heather Riccio, Adrian Castro, Mab Jones, Rick Marlatt, Ching-In Chen, Ann Marie Trietley, Zachary Kluckman, Allison A Hedge Coke, and more! Including a new series of paintings by the fabulous Melissa Regas, and photographs full of sword and gun goodness with Alex Bahr and Lauren Shoemaker from photographer and filmmaker Joseph Boeing! And a screenplay by Caroline (Nightmare Before Christmas, The Secret Garden, and The Addams Family) Thompson!

edited to say: Woooo! We're runing a George MacDonald adaptation by Caroline Thompson! We got new Adrian Castro poems! Rick Marlatt is publishing everywhere under the sun right now and we still got a few pieces from him! Daniela Gioseffi! Roger Weaver! Zita Muranyi!

Call for Submissions - FEM - Food

2009-04-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

Food. Sustenance is more than just meat and potables, and when it comes down to it, it’s true, you can’t live on bread alone. You can’t live without, either. That’s hunger, need or desire, and that’s something only you know for yourself when it comes on you. You can prescribe, proscribe, and analyze for others all you want, but you don’t know somebody else’s hunger, you know your own. You hypothesize all hunger that is not yours. But, that’s alright, because clearly the world hasn’t stopped going ‘round and as artists and creative types, hypothesizing and extrapolating is part of your thing. You can, in fact, hypothesize other people’s hunger away (they don’t need that, they’re just addicted; it takes days to starve to death), but rationalizing off your own hungers is a whole different animal. Yours are real, and the rest, hypothetical.

Enter, empathy, stage left, but anyway…

Future Earth Magazine wants you to feed us, or to make us hungry if you want to be cruel about it. Give us consumption, desire, hunger, digestion or reclamation. As always, all visual and written mediums welcome in digital copies/representation, be it fiction, nonfiction, prose or poetry, paintings or sculpture, leatherwork or lyrics, comic strips or triptychs or technical essays. We want it all, the whole all you can eat buffet of entertainment and infotainment.

Send via attachment in an e-mail, along with a short bio, to future_earth_mag@yahoo.com and further information at the website.

Thank you all.

Beginner Mode

2009-04-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Even in fictions of knowing, been 'round the block, protagonists, the introductory pages are always framed in this learning-the-ropes, fish out of water, frame. Whether a novel or short story becomes a bildungsroman, its first bits will always follow that model. Except, arguably, for Sherlock Holmes stories, because Holmes learns and grows roughly at the rate of dead coral (see, The Woman for further evidence), and that's why Watson's always a step behind.

This model allows a presumably ignorant audience to be babystepped in alongside the protagonist (or documenter, if the protagonist is already competent), and therein lies the rub, as they say: the reader is presumed ignorant. Why? Isn't it conceivably better to have - couldn't you get ages more mileage from - an audience who are already up to speed with you and moving at the same pace? It would force the author to keep up with the audience, for one, and I'm a firm believer in pushing everybody. Death to the author who can't run at the same pace as an audience who're holding the other end of the noose around said author's neck. Death to dead weight (and once dead, they can pause a bit and catch up at their own speed).

What would that look like? I mean, you would have to assume the author and the audience can keep up, and everybody would have to be responsible and paying attention, but, heck, shouldn't they be? Shouldn't readers read responsibly? Should not the author be paying attention?

Suddenly, large chunks of the literary scene look cruel and parasitic, others lullingly symbiotic, but little of it appears synchronous.